The Brief

California schools lost more than $2.2 million in state funding over two years because some students did not have all the vaccinations required by state law, according to data obtained by EdSource from the California State Controller’s Office. 

The loss of average daily attendance funding was the result of state audits of more than 1,000 public schools, where more than 10% of kindergartners or seventh grade students were not fully vaccinated in 2023 and 2024. After the state investigated, schools in 72 of those districts lost some funding.

Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest school district, with over 400,000 students, lost $324,055 in average daily attendance funding in 2023 and 2024, the two years reviewed by EdSource. The district had a budget of about $19 billion in both years.

The lost funds account for 22.1 days of attendance, including about three-quarters of a day, worth roughly $8,000, from a charter school, according to data from the State Controller’s Office.

San Francisco Unified, with about 50,000 students, was penalized about the same amount — $315,775. The district lost 26 days of daily attendance funding in those two years.

Oakland Unified lost $155,347 of attendance funding combined in 2023 and 2024 because it could not verify it was in full compliance with state vaccination requirements, according to documents provided by the district.

Even small school districts lost large chunks of state funding over the two years because of vaccination mandates. Snowline Joint Unified in San Bernardino County, which has about 8,000 students, lost 15.6 days of attendance funding worth $195,390. Ojai Unified in Ventura County, a school district of about 2,000 students, lost 14 days of funding, worth $166,993.

Because of the state’s complicated school funding system, the amounts schools receive and potentially can lose per student varies.

California law requires students to be immunized against 10 serious communicable diseases. Proof of immunization is required in kindergarten and seventh grade, as well as upon entering child care, transitional kindergarten, or when transferring schools from out of state. Schools lose attendance funding for the amount of time each year that each student is not fully vaccinated.

Districts must plan to improve

Last year, 428 schools were identified as having low vaccination rates and are being audited by the state. Los Angeles Unified, San Francisco Unified, Oakland Unified and Ojai Unified are among the districts that remain on the audit list.

Districts found to be out of compliance are required to develop a corrective action plan to make sure it doesn’t happen again, according to officials at the California Department of Education.

San Francisco Unified has taken steps to ensure the district complies with state vaccination law, said Laura Dudnick, director of communications.

The district has changed its enrollment process to require that immunization records and tuberculosis clearances be submitted in advance, so health workers can review them. During the application cycle for the upcoming school year, families are notified monthly of missing requirements, a move that is expected to reduce last-minute enrollment barriers and increase overall immunization compliance, Dudnick said.

“We take this responsibility seriously and appreciate the families who have worked with us to obtain required immunizations for their children,” she said. “We are working diligently to ensure students are immunized as required by law.”

Los Angeles Unified is hosting vaccination clinics and health fairs to provide immunizations and health services, and educating families on the importance of vaccinations, according to district officials. Health teams are also identifying barriers to vaccination and connecting families to resources.

“The health and safety of our students is our highest priority,” the district said in a statement sent to EdSource. “In response to the state vaccination audit, the district has deployed targeted outreach and support for the identified schools. We have maintained an overall district-wide immunization compliance rate of 98% since the audit.”

California offers exemptions for children in special education, home-based private schools and for medical reasons. But in 2015, the state Legislature added more oversight to medical exemptions, requiring the California Department of Public Health to review exemptions at schools with an immunization rate of less than 95%, or if a doctor has written more than five exemptions in a year.

Measles cases soaring

The 2015 decision came after a major measles outbreak at Disneyland. Now, measles cases are on the rise again, with 982 cases reported in the U.S. so far this year.

Measles cases in California have been racing upward as well, from four cases in 2023 to 25 in 2025. This year, there have already been 19 reported cases of measles in the state, according to the California Department of Public Health. Los Angeles County alone has had four measles cases reported since Jan. 30.

“The MMR vaccine is the safest and most reliable way to prevent measles and protect yourself, your family, and your community,” said Los Angeles County Health Officer Muntu Davis in a statement. “Measles spreads easily and can lead to serious complications, including pneumonia, brain swelling, and even death.”

When Bengara opened in Los Angeles' Arts District earlier this year, its owner and head chef had something special lined up in their kitchen arsenal.

It was genshiyaki, a rare traditional Japanese grilling method that dates back 1,500 years.

Chef and co-owner Tyler Burges had only encountered it once while traveling in Japan at a robatayaki spot in Fukuoka, a port city on the island of Kyushu.

Robatayaki, a style of slow, ember-cooked grilling rooted in Japan's rural coastal kitchens, usually centers on an open charcoal hearth. But the restaurant Burges visited had something even more noteworthy: a genshiyaki pit, a gentler, ambient method of cooking that uses radiant heat instead of direct flame.

Loving the unusually subtle, delicate flavor and texture it produced, he and head chef Phil Mireles decided to bring genshiyaki back to the U.S. and build their Arts District restaurant around it. The genshiyaki pit is a rare enough technique that Burges had to work with fabricator Phil Roxworthy for six months just to get the grill built to spec.

It's Burges' and Mireles' first L.A. project. The pair are also behind Smoke Door, their acclaimed Lake Tahoe restaurant, and Bengara brings a more casual, day-to-day take on the same fire-driven cooking.

All roads lead to the Arts District

Chef/owner Tyler Burges (left) and head chef Phil Mireles at Bengara.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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Burges and Mireles both got their start at San Francisco's Saison and Angler under chef Joshua Skenes — who's now just down the street in L.A. at LYNX with fellow alum Brandyn Tepper.

Burges traces Bengara's DNA back to two mentors: Ron Siegel, who introduced him to Japanese ingredients and technique in his mid-20s, and Skenes, who taught him to cook with live fire. It was Skenes, Burges said, who showed him that fire didn't have to mean char and bravado.

"The one thing I loved about wood-fire cooking is you get this subtle, sweet barbecue flavor when you cook correctly over embers, and you don't cook directly over the fire," Burges said. "Most places, when you think about grilling something, you think of char, bold flavors, masculine flavors. But Chef Josh — it's like a master art, getting really delicate, subtle flavor using that grill method."

The uni kiritampo, Bengara's take on a traditional Akita-prefecture rice skewer, finished with scallion.

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Wono Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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What sets the food apart

Take their luscious miso cod. On a normal grill, the marinade's sugars would blacken before the fish cooked through. On the genshiyaki pit, the cod sits at a distance from the embers, cooking gently until the very end, when it's given one last pass directly over the coals — what Burges describes as a final "kiss" of heat before it hits the plate.

To fuel genshiyaki's slower, ambient style, ordinary charcoal or wood is replaced with binchotan, an ultra-dense, pure-carbon hardwood charcoal traditionally made in Japan, which burns hotter and cleaner.

The signature dish

A perfect example of how this cooking style comes together is the uni kiritampo, the Akita prefecture rice skewer, reimagined with uni and cooked via genshiyaki — born of an offhand kitchen conversation with one of the restaurant's Japanese chefs about regional dishes cooked over fire.

Once they realized genshiyaki was the dish's original, historic cooking method, the rest fell into place.

"It's like the most delicious thing," Burges said. "I don't know why it never made it over to the United States earlier."

Bengara's Arts District dining room pairs industrial bones with warm, low lighting and long communal tables.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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The chewy exterior, with just a hint of smoke, gives way to a creamy inside, like a caramelized custard, that’s topped with a decadent amount of uni, providing a semi-sweet finish — one memorable bite.

Tasting menu option

Bengara recently added a daily eight-course tasting menu ($98) that doubles as a greatest-hits tour of the kitchen — Toyosu carpaccio with chili coffee oil, pork belly "tacos" wrapped in mochi crepes, miso cod, Mary's half chicken, and handmade citrus soba, with optional wagyu and uni add-ons.

The price includes a beverage pairing, with a full non-alcoholic option alongside the boozy version. Walk-ins are welcome, and reservations can be booked via OpenTable.

Topline:

Why it matters: Museum officials said you will “likely experience high demand and long wait times in the queue" and thanked people for their patience.

LAist saw estimated wait times up to 6 hours, and it took a little more than 4.5 hours for this reporter to get through. On the bright side, there were still plenty of tickets left, including for the first day. Do not refresh the page or you may lose your spot.

The details: All tickets are timed entry. Tickets are $25 for adults and $21 for those 65 and older. Children, members, active-duty military, personal aides or attendants and EBT cardholders have free entry. Museum neighbors in the LM37 program will also be free, with that pass opening in August.

But how do I buy: Each person is limited to nine tickets, and you’ll have 20 minutes to check out once they’re added to your cart, according to the museum. You can find the link here.

What's next: The grand opening is Sept. 22.

Go deeper: How to secure Lucas Museum of Narrative Art tickets ahead of the fall opening

Inglewood officials are working on a full rewrite of the city map for the first time in nearly 40 years, laying out how they want the city to grow and change for the next two decades.

Along part of Manchester Boulevard, city planners are setting up an option for developers to rebuild rows of small storefronts with a mix of homes and commercial space. On La Brea Avenue, south of Centinela Avenue, they envision the possibility of dense housing and business blocks as high as six stories.

Jerome Johnson, an Inglewood local, said he’s lived through three decades of change in the city. He recalled watching a “raggedy market” at the corner of La Brea and Centinela make way for the two-story shopping center that’s there today. He said the potential developments around the intersection could be a catch-22.

“There’s a shortage of housing,” Johnson said. “But you don’t want it to turn into New York City.”

It’s all part of the ongoing process for Inglewood’s new general plan, the foundational guide that governs things like what kind of buildings can be built where in the city and how they need to look. A draft land-use plan will go before the Inglewood City Council on Tuesday, then go into the environmental impact review process.

“This is really a historic milestone for the city,” Bernard McCrumby, Inglewood development services director, told The LA Local. 

McCrumby said planners are aiming to open up room for new housing and to revitalize some of the city’s flagging business corridors, without changing the city’s existing residential blocks or sacrificing the grocery stores, barbershops and local restaurants that make neighborhoods tick.

“The stadiums and arenas are here, they’re not going anywhere,” McCrumby said. “Now we can plan around those.”

The last time the city did a full update of its general plan was 1987, when horses were still racing at Hollywood Park and the “Showtime” Lakers were winning championships at the Forum. Edward Vincent Jr., the city’s first Black mayor, had only been in office for four years. 

The city has made intermittent updates to its planning guidelines since then — notably remapping a band of Inglewood along the Metro K line before it opened — but city documents indicate planners spent the past couple years working on a comprehensive rewrite. 

The new update to the general plan could set the city’s direction until 2050.

Planners hope to change some of the city’s commercial corridors into mixed-use zones that allow for housing and businesses alongside each other or even stacked on top of each other.

Those zones could go in place along Century Boulevard and Arbor Vitae Street as well as Manchester, Centinela and La Brea.

The rest of the update, McCrumby said, is aimed at lining the city’s zoning regulations up with state law and the city’s current reality on the ground.

City staff held several community meetings over the last year as they put together the draft and still aren’t done gathering feedback. 

The next year will see at least one more community meeting and a 45-day public review period, according to city documents. McCrumby said that, with the anchor of the land-use map in place, planners will continue to work on the rest of the general plan, targeting final City Council approval of the plan and accompanying environmental impact report next spring.

You can get all the details on the general plan at nextlevelinglewood.com and attend the City Council meeting at 2 p.m. on Tuesday to give a public comment.

We also want to know what you think of the proposed changes. Email isaiah@thelalocal.org with your questions or thoughts.

Students within the Los Angeles Unified School District showed improvements on state reading, math and science standardized tests for a third consecutive year, district authorities announced Tuesday.

Superintendent Andrés Chait revealed the preliminary results at the annual opening-of-schools address at East L.A.’s Garfield High School— his first as the district’s leader since the board appointed him to the job in June.

“ These are not just numbers on a page,” Chait said to an audience that included about 1,000 principals, administrators and district supporters. “They are the result of your passion, your persistence, your belief in what students can achieve. These are collective accomplishments.

"They reflect the dedication, skill, and commitment of our entire community,” he said.

Jai Gant-Leau, principal of Eagle Tree Continuation High School, said the “back-to-basics” focus of Chait’s speech was a welcome departure from the tone of recent opening addresses.

“We will continue to rise for the outcomes and expectations for the success of our students. That's the message I got,” Gant-Leau said. “Very different than the others where it was a lot of… bells and whistles.”

Why it matters

Student achievement, as measured by test scores, plummeted during the pandemic. Los Angeles Unified’s growth in 2025 outpaced the state, as test scores exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

This year the percentage of students in all grades who met or exceeded the standard are 39.7% for math, 48.3% for English and 32.1% for science. It’s unclear how this compares to students statewide because those results have yet to be released.

Challenges ahead

Chait also acknowledged the challenges posed by declining enrollment, community fears of immigration enforcement actions and proposed budget cuts.

 “The decisions will be hard, but we cannot lose sight of what defines us,” Chait said. “We are the system that lifts students to opportunity, turns potential into achievement, creates spaces of belonging, healing, growth.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.