The Brief

Roughly a month after the Los Angeles Unified School District revoked its AI chatbot, Ed, communities of parents, teachers and experts are demanding that the school district respond to their concern that the short-lived association with AllHere, the company that built and supported the program, has potentially compromised data on the district’s larger educational priorities.

“While we welcome technological advancements, it’s crucial to engage in transparent discussions with educators, educational staff, parents, and policymakers about the risks and impacts of AI in schools,” said Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), in a statement.

UTLA also encouraged the district to engage outside counsel and move forward with an investigation. Myart-Cruz also emphasized in the statement that any AI tools moving forward are part of collective bargaining.

School board member Rocío Rivas said in a July 31 Facebook post that the district has “initiated investigations” to look into allegations of compromised data.

A spokesperson for LAUSD said on July 15 that regardless of what happens to AllHere, student data will be protected by security measures that forbid the company from storing student data outside the U.S., unless the district grants the company permission to do so.

The lead-up

In March, LAUSD rolled out the red carpet to introduce Ed , a smiling sun chatbot designed to serve as a personal assistant for students — capable of connecting them to mental health resources, informing them of cafeteria menus and waking them up in the morning.

The district has repeatedly justified its decision to use AllHere.

“Los Angeles Unified launched a rigorous and competitive RFP (request for proposal) process and adhered to the District’s procurement process,” a district spokesperson told EdSource. “What we intended to develop did not readily exist as an off-the-shelf product, and we needed to build this from the ground up.”

The district considered three entities — AllHere, Afirma and Kokomo 24/7, which LAUSD collaborated with to provide telehealth services — and paid AllHere roughly $3 million for the product.

Carvalho said the bot was also designed to nudge students who are falling behind and allow them to click on resources for help. He also reassured the March event’s attendees that agencies at various levels — local, state and national — would help monitor any cybersecurity concerns.

At the time, he acknowledged that Ed might endure some challenges but that the district was committed to its success.

“Just like humans are not perfect — although sometimes, in certain political circles, some say they are — the technology produced by humans isn’t perfect either,” Carvalho said at the March event.

“With all of the protections against the vulnerabilities, there is always a concern. That’s why we are over vigilant,” he said.

The rollout

Ed was supposed to be rolled out in phases — beginning with the district’s 100 priority schools .

Three months later, on June 14, alarms began to sound, and AllHere had furloughed the bulk of its staff due to financial challenges, The 74 reported . Meanwhile, the CEO left.

In response — and because AllHere staff were unable to supervise it — the district removed the chatbot feature. LAUSD, however, still owns Ed, the district spokesperson confirmed, and the resource is still largely available to families.

The LAUSD spokesperson said Ed’s chatbot will return to families when the “human-in-the-loop aspect is re-established.”

“Los Angeles Unified was surprised by the financial disruption to AllHere. We were not made aware of any red flags concerning the organization, its solvency, or any financial issues,” the district spokesperson said.

“We had every confidence in their ability to develop a solid product. We, like other districts, were notified of their financial collapse and immediately ceased payment for a pending invoice.”

The spokesperson also said that the district has not found a connection between what happened at AllHere and a data breach known as the Snowflake incident, adding that AllHere “does not maintain data on Snowflake.”

Concerns over potentially compromised data have remained in the LAUSD community since, leading the district to begin investigating.

The pushback

While Los Angeles Unified remains committed to Ed, community members and experts at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education continue to express their concern about student safety and the district’s priorities.

“All we want are smaller class sizes and happy teachers. Basic stuff,” said Joanna Belson, the parent of a senior at North Hollywood High School, whose sister teaches in the district. “We don’t want Ed. We don’t want AI.”

She added that the district should instead spend its money on expanding music and arts education — and extending sports programs to middle schools.

Echoing Belson, Alicia Baltazar, another LAUSD parent, voiced concerns about any potential data compromise, saying the district’s newfound emphasis on AI contradicts its new decision to ban cellphones in school. She added that the district should instead spend the money on bolstering its staff.

“I don’t know … how I’m going to tell my kid: ‘Stay off your cellphone. Don’t touch that at all. But here, use your laptop all day long. Use your chatbot,’” she said.

For Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, a professor at USC, the concerns lie in the technology itself.

Where the evidence?

Copur-Gencturk said there’s no evidence that the tool can accomplish what the district said it can do: promote academic recovery.

“AI has incredible potential to transform education and improve educational outcomes. There is no doubt about that. But there is a big ‘if,’” Copur-Gencturk said. “And I think many are ignoring that part. Most of the AI-based tools are not designed based on what we have learned from research on teaching and learning.”

She said, for example, that AI tends to take each learning goal separately, without considering how concepts build on or connect to one another. This is particularly common in subjects like mathematics and could negatively impact students’ learning experience.

School districts, she said, should not spend large sums of money on AI unless they are certain the necessary security measures are in place and will have the positive academic impact they are seeking.

“There’s a notion that as long as artificial intelligence is involved, or a newer technology is involved, it will solve the problems,” Copur-Gencturk said. “Unfortunately, life is not that simple. We really need to, as educators, as administrators, we really need to be more cautious.”

Beyond Los Angeles Unified

While LAUSD has struggled with its rollout of Ed, districts across the nation that are contemplating incorporating AI could feel the effects, said Robin Lake, the director of the nonprofit Center for Reinventing Public Education .

“We never want to see things like that happen, and it’s obviously a setback for LAUSD in their goals for that tool,” Lake said. “But it’s also potentially a setback for other districts around the country who might look to LAUSD and think, ‘Oh, no, I don’t want to take any risks at all around AI, because I don’t want to end up in the newspaper.’”

She also said LAUSD’s story could serve as a reminder for other districts to roll out any AI features more slowly and more carefully, especially amid a “gold rush of providers” and a desire to remain ahead of the curve.

Lake also emphasized the importance of the education communities coming together to communicate their needs to education technology companies — and stressed the need for state and federal governments to provide better guidance to help ensure AI is woven into education equitably.

Despite the challenges, however, Lake maintained that AI has incredible potential to transform education — and that a “couple blowups” experienced by one district should not deter others from pursuing AI tools.

“Could AI help transform the teaching profession? Could AI help address student mental health crises? Could AI help improve assessments in education?” Lake said.

“There’s so many, so many possibilities. There’s still big questions around all of them, but as times get tighter around money, as federal funding goes away, we really must look to all potential solutions, and AI should be one of those.”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended an order blocking full SNAP payments, amid signals that the government shutdown could soon end and food aid payments resume.

The order keeps in place at least for a few more days a chaotic situation. People who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to feed their families in some states have received their full monthly allocations, while others have received nothing.

The order will expire just before midnight Thursday.

The Senate has approved a bill to end the shutdown and the House of Representatives could vote on it as early as Wednesday. Reopening the government would restart the program that helps 42 million Americans buy groceries, but it's not clear how quickly full payments would resume.

The justices chose what is effectively the path of least resistance, anticipating the federal government shutdown will end soon while avoiding any substantive legal ruling about whether lower court orders to keep full payments flowing during the shutdown are correct.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only one of the nine justices to say she would have revived the lower court orders immediately, but didn't otherwise explain her vote. Jackson signed the initial order temporarily freezing the payments.

Beneficiaries in some states have received their full monthly allocations while in others they have received nothing. Some states have issued partial payments.

How quickly SNAP benefits could reach recipients if the government reopens would vary by state. But states and advocates say that it's easier to make full payments quickly than partial ones.

Carolyn Vega, a policy analyst at the advocacy group Share Our Strength, also said there could be some technical challenges for states that have issued partial benefits to send out the remaining amount.

An urgent need for beneficiaries

In Pennsylvania, full November benefits went out to some people on Friday. But Jim Malliard, 41, of Franklin, said he had not received anything by Monday.

Malliard is a full-time caretaker for his wife, who is blind and has had several strokes this year, and his teenage daughter, who suffered severe medical complications from surgery last year.

That stress has only been compounded by the pause in the $350 monthly SNAP payment he previously received for himself, his wife and daughter. He said he is down to $10 in his account and is relying on what's left in the pantry — mostly rice and ramen.

"It's kind of been a lot of late nights, making sure I had everything down to the penny to make sure I was right," Malliard said. "To say anxiety has been my issue for the past two weeks is putting it mildly."

The political wrangling in Washington has shocked many Americans, and some have been moved to help.

"I figure that I've spent money on dumber stuff than trying to feed other people during a manufactured famine," said Ashley Oxenford, a teacher who set out a "little food pantry" in her front yard this week for vulnerable neighbors in Carthage, New York.

SNAP has been the center of an intense fight in court

The Trump administration chose to cut off SNAP funding after October due to the shutdown. That decision sparked lawsuits and a string of swift and contradictory judicial rulings that deal with government power — and impact food access for about 1 in 8 Americans.

The administration went along with two rulings on Oct. 31 by judges who said the government must provide at least partial funding for SNAP. It eventually said recipients would get up to 65% of their regular benefits. But it balked last week when one of the judges said it must fund the program fully for November, even if that means digging into funds the government said need to be maintained in case of emergencies elsewhere.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to pause that order.

An appeals court said Monday that full funding should resume, and that requirement was set to kick in Tuesday night before the top court extended the order blocking full SNAP payments.

Congressional talks about reopening government

The U.S. Senate on Monday passed legislation to reopen the federal government with a plan that would include replenishing SNAP funds. Speaker Mike Johnson told members of the House to return to Washington to consider the deal a small group of Senate Democrats made with Republicans.

President Trump has not said whether he would sign it if it reaches his desk, but told reporters at the White House on Sunday that it "looks like we're getting close to the shutdown ending."

Still, the Trump administration said in a Supreme Court filing Monday that it shouldn't be up to the courts.

"The answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority," Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the papers. "The only way to end this crisis — which the Executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government."

After Tuesday's ruling, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on social media: "Thank you to the Court for allowing Congress to continue its swift progress."

The coalition of cities and nonprofit groups who challenged the SNAP pause said in a court filing Tuesday that the Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, is to blame for the confusion.

"The chaos was sown by USDA's delays and intransigence," they said, "not by the district court's efforts to mitigate that chaos and the harm it has inflicted on families who need food."
Copyright 2025 NPR

WASHINGTON — Flight disruptions are likely to continue even after the government reopens , airlines and aviation regulators warned, as airlines canceled scores of flights on Tuesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to reduce air traffic at 40 of the nation's busiest airports, with cuts still ramping up to 10% of flights by Friday. The agency has been dealing with persistent staffing shortages of air traffic controllers , who are required to work without pay during the shutdown, which is now the longest in U.S. history at 42 days and counting.

This past weekend, the FAA reported staffing shortages at dozens of facilities, prompting the agency to slow air traffic to relieve pressure on air traffic controllers who did show up to work. On Tuesday, airlines canceled more than 1,200 flights, according to the aviation tracking site FlightAware .

The situation seemed to be improving somewhat on Tuesday, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, with only a handful of FAA facilities reporting staffing shortages. But Duffy said that air traffic restrictions would remain in place until regulators are satisfied that staffing is back to normal levels.

"We're going to wait to see the data on our end before we take out the restrictions in travel," Duffy said during a press conference at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. "But it depends on controllers coming back to work."

Even when those restrictions are lifted, it may take several days for airlines to return to normal operations.

"It's gonna take a bit to unwind," said former FAA administrator Randy Babbitt in an interview with NPR's All Things Considered.

"The airplanes are in the wrong cities and so forth. They're going to have to sort all that out as well. So a good deal of the responsibility will be the carriers getting their schedules and the aircraft and personnel back in the right positions to resume normal flying," Babbitt said.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Tuesday that airlines may have to "stop flying" if Congressional lawmakers don't vote to end the government shutdown.

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Seth Wenig

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AP

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An aviation industry trade group, Airlines for America, also warned that it will take time for carriers to get back to normal.

"Airlines' reduced flight schedules cannot immediately bounce back to full capacity right after the government reopens. It will take time, and there will be residual effects for days," the group said in a statement.

The FAA argues the flight restrictions are necessary to keep the system safe while fewer air traffic controllers are showing up to work during the government shutdown. Some of those controllers have taken on second jobs during the shutdown, and many have called in sick.

But to the Trump administration's critics, the move appears to be about more than just safety. Some Democrats argue that the cuts were a political ploy to raise the pressure to end the government shutdown.

Secretary Duffy rejected that charge on Tuesday, saying the administration was responding to real concerns from pilots and mounting concerns about increasing loss of separation between aircraft.

And he warned of even bigger disruptions ahead if lawmakers do not vote to end the shutdown .

"You may find airlines that stop flying, full stop," Duffy said in Chicago. "You might have airlines that say, we're going to ground our planes, we're not going to fly anymore. That's how serious this is."
Copyright 2025 NPR

Los Angeles billboard culture is memorable, to say the least.

Our attorney billboards have inspired Hollywood . Creative STD prevention ads have reminded people about safety in weirdly direct ways. Even upside down “ Call Jacob ” and “ hate vegans ” billboards have left a confusing impression.

In a world of drab advertisements, every so often the cream of the crop rises to the top. LAist 89.3’s AirTalk unpacked some of those iconic memories recently. Here’s what listeners shared.

Billboards for music

Billboard for Beatles Abbey Road record circa 1969 on the Sunset Strip.

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Courtesy Robert Landau

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Robert Landau, photographer and author of Rock ‘N’ Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip , has spent years documenting these scenes. He says you have to be clever to plant a seed in drivers’ minds in only a few seconds.

“ We’re such a car-oriented culture that we take this advertising form of billboards and maybe raise it to an art form,” he told host Austin Cross.

One that he remembers vividly is the Beatles’ Abbey Road billboard in 1969.

He said this period was about rock ‘n’ roll music. The bands he listened to were depicted on what he called artistic, almost non-commercial billboards on the Sunset Strip.

“[It created] almost a drive through gallery at that time,” he said.

Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room”

Sam, a listener from Atwater Village, called to share one billboard that lives rent free in his mind.

“ If you traveled in Hollywood on Highland, anytime in the early two thousands,” he said, “you saw the billboard for the Tommy Wiseau movie The Room.”

The billboard was up for years and had little information about what it was actually about. A black-and-white Wiseau stared down passersby next to directions to call a number on the billboard to “RSVP.” (To the movie? A meeting? Who knew.)

It became a sort of local mystery while the movie reached cult-like status .

The Angelyne campaigns

Another one L.A. won’t soon forget is model Angelyne’s plethora of billboards that have dotted the skyline for decades. Yes, decades .

Michael in Studio City said he’s always found the billboard queen entertaining. They’re known for being bright pink and showing Angelyne, usually in a suggestive or sultry pose, alongside just her name.

“I was confused about what necessarily she was going for other than notoriety,” he said.

We could go on forever about L.A.’s hodgepodge of excellent billboards. What’s one that sticks out to you? Send your thoughts to chernandez@laist.com and we may follow up.

This  story was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on Tuesday.

Residents of Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles are invited to join Metro’s community working group to provide input on a series of projects aimed at decreasing pollution and improving streets for pedestrians and cyclists.

The effort is part of the Long Beach-East Los Angeles Corridor Mobility Investment Plan, a $4 billion initiative that includes more than 200 projects and 15 programs that prioritize transit, walking, biking, safety and cleaner air.

It spans 18 cities and three unincorporated communities from Long Beach to East LA along the I-710 corridor. The plan includes an initial $743 million from the previously canceled I-710 freeway expansion project.

Who can join

The working group will be made up of 30 people who will represent their community by serving a two-year term. Working group members may be eligible for compensation at a rate of $150 per meeting, earning up to $4,300 per Metro fiscal year, according to Metro .

“We want residents, community members, family members, students, mothers, fathers, grandmas that can come and represent their community … to help us set the priorities,” said Patrick Chandler, a Metro spokesperson.

Chandler said the hope is working group members then can inform their neighbors, “so they are aware of what their concerns are.”

“We know that especially for Boyle Heights, with the East LA interchange … we want to go in a direction that is equitable, that is community driven,” he added.

How to apply

Applications are due Nov. 14 and can be completed online in Spanish or English . To request a paper application, you can email 710corridor@metro.net. Selected members will be notified in December.

Frequently asked questions about the project are available in English and Spanish . To learn more, visit: metro.net/lb-ela-cp-hub.