Sabrina T. Sanchez
engages with parents of young children to shape stories that are useful and meaningful to them.
Published September 4, 2025 5:00 AM
A group of children play at a splash pad in Alhambra. The National Weather Service says "significant heatwave will impact Southern California Friday into next week."
(
Frederic J. BROWN
/
AFP via Getty Images
)
Topline:
Parents have a lot of favorite places to take their kids around L.A., including a variety of activities for play and learning. LAist collected their recommendations, which include nature visits, water outings, and indoor playgrounds, all tested and approved by parents.
The backstory: To find out where families go, we turned to parent communities LAist has formed: Our Hey BB texting group (which helps people navigate the journey of new parenthood) and the early childhood newsletter community. They shared nearly 30 spots that they love taking their kids to and why. Spoiler alert: There's a map to help you plan your next family adventure!
Finding free or affordable places tailored for young kids, children 5 and under, has been a popular topic when talking to parents. To get answers on where families can go, I went to the source: parent communities. From nature and water to indoor playgrounds, they shared a variety of spots tested and parent-approved.
LAist's Hey BB text group (which helps people navigate the journey of new parenthood) and the early childhood newsletter community shared nearly 30 spots they love to take their kids.
Jessica Li, a parent of a 1- and 5-year-old, says all three places she recommends are "yes spaces for kids where they can lead self-directed play with minimum risks.”
The recommendations showcase a wide range of places for children with different interests, hobbies, and energy levels.
Check out our map of all the recommendations, in addition to the more-detailed list below.
Dina Morales and her 20-month-old-daughter sing hello during storytime at the South Gate branch of the L.A. County Library system.
(
Mariana Dale/ LAist
)
Libraries
Public libraries are by far the most popular spot to take kids. They offer storytime, classes, and books — and some even have play areas and toy rentals.
“The sensory room is a solid indoor option that you can reserve for an hour in advance with a library card," Li says. "There are various tactile, visual, and audio toys to play with in a comfy environment — think beanbag chairs, vibrating floor rockers, a white-noise machine, bubble and lava lamps, a starry night light projector."
“Glendale Central Library, Monterey Park Library, Jefferson Branch Library in Pasadena — all have great areas for kids to play and be as LOUD as they want, with good book selections,” says Aimee Suen, who goes with her 5-year-old.
Alexis Cun, a parent of a 2-year-old, loves the Harte Neighborhood Library in Long Beach because of the dedicated library teachers who put a lot of effort and care into their storytimes.
About 650 kids attending PlayLA summer programs throughout the city tried out different sports outside the Coliseum on Monday, July 14, 2025.
(
Mariana Dale/LAist
)
Indoor play and kid classes
PlayLA The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks offers the PlayLA Program, which gives children ages 3-17 the opportunity to take part in sports such as swimming, baseball, and football, as well as adaptive sports designed to include all kids with disabilities. There are 88 recreation centers to choose from.
Kidspace Children’s Museum The educational and cultural institution is designed to bring joy to children and families through hands-on exhibits, water features, and different spaces for kids to play and explore.
Cost: General Admission for Adults and Children (1+), $15.50
My Gym My Gym offers a variety of activities for children from 6 weeks to 10 years old, including parties, camps, and classes. It has more than 700 locations, with 28 in Los Angeles, according to their map.
Adriana Orea takes her child to the “interactive play classes” at the Koreatown location, which features an indoor playground.
“My son has a lot of fun, it's safe, indoors, and he gets to socialize and learn new skills at the same time,” Orea says.
Cost: Base Tuition, $149 every four weeks; Unlimited Tuition, $179 every four weeks.
The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks provides $10 summer passes for youth, which give unlimited access to city pools. Adults can also enter free if they have a child under 7.
“The summer youth pass is amazing!” Gillespie-Vargas says.
The lagoon at Redondo Beach is a unique public swimming pool engulfed by seawater with small water slides.
“I love taking my son to the Redondo Beach Lagoon because it's a shallow kiddie beach that uses cycled chlorinated salt water — I don't have to worry about big ocean waves, and he gets a great experience in a pretty clean pool!” Ali Sivak says.
Cost: Adults (18+), $10.00; Children (2-17), $8.00; Children under 2, free
This family-friendly beach features a children’s play area, metered parking, picnic tables, ample shade, and tide pools!
“White Point offers some of the most diverse tide pools in Southern California,” according to the Los Angeles County Beaches & Harbors website.
Li likes how safe and calm it feels for her kids to play in the ocean, whether it’s high tide or not. She says the beach where her family visited has never been crowded, and she enjoys that it’s a pebbled beach instead of sandy.
"There's a playground on the cliff overlooking the tide pools and free parking if you don't mind walking down the cliffside,” Li says.
Cherry blossoms in the Japanese Tea Garden, Descanso Gardens.
“There is a little creek there with lots of wildlife and shade from all the trees,” Li says. “It's large enough to feel like you could almost get lost but small and dense enough to feel comfortable letting your kids wander.”
This 87-acre garden has more than 25,000 plant species, attracting a wide variety of birds and wildlife. Highlights include the Dorothy and John Bohannon Rose Garden, Living Wall, Garden for the Senses, and more!
A Kidspace attendee marvels at the Bottle Rocket exhibit in the new "Physics Forest."
The Natural History Museum has an array of exhibitions for all ages. Ongoing exhibits include the dinosaur hall, where children can see mounted skeletons and fossils on display. For an immersive experience, there’s the discovery center.
“Pretend to be a paleontologist in the Paleo Playzone; marvel at the beauty and variety of bugs in Bugtopia; and create your own nature scene in the Moveable Museum,” according to the Natural History Museum website.
Cost: Adults, $18; Children 3-12, $7; Children under 2, free.
This coffee shop serves quality coffee — co-owner Frank La won the 2024 U.S. Barista Championship. One parent especially likes that it has a play area for when her child tags along.
Demonstrators recently marched around the Adelanto ICE Processing Center to demand the release of people detained there.
(
Libby Rainey
/
LAist
)
Topline:
An LAist analysis shows that the Adelanto ICE Processing Center — the immigration detention center closest to Los Angeles — is among the top 10 facilities across the U.S. placing people in solitary confinement.
Why it matters: About 1,800 people are held at Adelanto today. In court filings, detainees there have said that isolation is used to punish them for speaking out against inhumane and unsanitary conditions at the facility.
Who’s responsible? The GEO Group Inc., a private company that operates the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, has not responded to requests for comment. In multiple statements to the media, ICE has said that the agency “is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments.”
The backstory: In May 2025, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center had 14 people in isolation. When the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort revved up last June, the number of detainees in solitary confinement there more than tripled and has climbed since.
What's next: Earlier this year, a coalition of immigrant rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of detainees, calling for conditions at Adelanto to be improved. The coalition has since requested an emergency court order to prevent further harm. A hearing is scheduled for April 10.
Read on … for details about the use of solitary confinement at Adelanto.
The immigration detention center closest to Los Angeles has placed dozens of people in solitary confinement each month since June, according to the most recent data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In May 2025, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center had 14 people in isolation. When the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort revved up in June 2025, the number of detainees in solitary confinement there more than tripled. By July, it was 73; by August, 105.
The most recent data available shows that number went down slightly in January, to 74 people.
Ranked by percentage of the detainee population in “segregation,” as it is called at immigrant detention centers, Adelanto is among the U.S.’s top 10 facilities as of January, according to an LAist analysis of the most recent ICE data.
The data shows that of 229 ICE facilities that reported holding people since October 2024, between 50 and 60 usually reported putting at least one person in segregation in a given month. Out of the facilities that did place people in solitary confinement, Adelanto tended to do so less often than others until June 2025. (The facility held just a few people from October 2024 into January 2025.) When ICE’s presence increased in L.A. in June, the number of people sent to isolation in the facility also shot up — three to five times as many people have been isolated in Adelanto compared to the average facility that used any solitary confinement.
Since June, only two facilities have sent people to solitary confinement more times than Adelanto: one southwest of San Antonio, the other in central Pennsylvania.
Both of those facilities held twice the number of detainees as Adelanto on average from October 2024 through September 2025; but the number of people held in Adelanto since then has tripled, growing larger than either of the other facilities to hold an average of 1,800 people a day since October.
How we reported this
LAist used official, publicly available data from ICE about its detentions nationwide and at specific facilities.
To calculate percentages of people held in isolation as of January 2026, LAist also used official ICE data as recorded by both TRAC Immigration and the Internet Archive that was no longer available on ICE's public website.
Records of “special and vulnerable populations” for the fourth quarter of the 2025 fiscal year and records of monthly segregation placements by facility from September 2025 were missing from ICE's data and are not reflected in LAist's analysis.
More on solitary confinement
According to ICE, detainees may be placed in segregation for “disciplinary reasons,” or because of:
“Serious mental or medical illness.”
Conducting a hunger strike.
Suicide watch.
The agency also says it might place detainees “who may be susceptible to harm [if left among the] general population due in part to how others interpret or assume their sexual orientation, or sexual presentation or expression.”
Not only is ICE holding more people in solitary confinement, but the agency's data also shows that detainees across the country are being isolated for longer periods of time. Detainees ICE considers part of the "vulnerable & special population" spent an average of about two weeks in solitary confinement each time they were isolated in 2022, when ICE first made the data available. By the end of 2025, the average stay in isolation had risen to more than seven weeks straight.
The GEO Group Inc., a private company that operates the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, has not responded to requests for comment.
How isolation can affect immigrant detainees
UN human rights experts consider solitary confinement placements that last 15 days or more to be torture, though the U.S. Supreme Court has held that isolation doesn’t violate the Constitution.
The UN also maintains that solitary confinement should be prohibited for people “with mental or physical disabilities when their conditions would be exacerbated by such measures.”
In January, a coalition of immigrant rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of current detainees, calling for conditions at Adelanto to be improved. In addition to an unsanitary environment and a lack of healthy food and clean drinking water, detainees say solitary confinement is frequently used to punish those who speak out about conditions at the facility.
People held in immigrant detention centers are technically in “civil detention,” meaning that they are being detained to ensure their presence at hearings and compliance with immigration orders — notto serve criminal sentences.
According to the immigrant rights groups’ complaint, one detainee was placed in solitary confinement after complaining about the showers being broken. Another detainee said that, after asking a guard to “use more respectful language toward him, he was ridiculed, written up and given the middle finger by a guard who shouted, ‘Who the f--- do you think you are?’” Then, the detainee was placed in solitary confinement for 25 days.
Alvaro Huerta, the director of litigation and advocacy at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center who is representing detainees at Adelanto, told LAist that when people are placed in isolation at the facility, they’re typically in the same cell for 23 hours per day, unable to receive visits from their families.
For clients who are experiencing mental health challenges — especially those with suicidal thoughts — being placed in solitary confinement “can really exacerbate their condition,” he added.
In multiple statements to the media, ICE has said that the agency “is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.” The agency has also said that detainees receive “comprehensive medical care” and that all detainees “receive medical, dental, and mental health intake screenings within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility.”
Huerta called that “laughable.”
“We have countless examples of people who have said that this is not true, that they're not getting the medication that they're requesting, that they're not being seen for chronic conditions and emergency conditions,” he added. “And we know it's not true because 14 people have died in ICE custody this year alone.”
Libby Rainey
has been tracking how L.A. is prepping for the 2028 Olympic Games.
Published April 3, 2026 4:58 PM
Tickets to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles went on sale Thursday.
(
Emma McIntyre
/
Getty Images for LA28
)
Topline:
As the locals-only sale kicks off and Southern Californians have their first chance to buy tickets to the Olympic Games, some fans are wide-eyed at the high fees on all tickets and the prices in general, which start at $28 but go up to more than $5,500 a pop.
Sticker shock: Lori Rovner of Manhattan Beach told LAist that one $2,100 ticket had a $505 service fee, bringing the total cost to $2,604.63.
Other prices: Some people LAist spoke with opted for only $28 or similarly priced tickets, even if it meant missing some of the biggest Olympic events. One user on Reddit said they purchased 18 tickets for around $550.
Read on … about how much fans are spending on tickets.
Lori Rovner of Manhattan Beach is a big sports fan, so there was no question that when tickets for the Olympic Games went on sale, she'd be signing up.
She scored a slot in the first ticket drop, which launched Thursday, and logged on right at 10 a.m., hoping to score tickets to the Opening Ceremonies and some finals too. After battling her computer to get through "access denied" screens and a lost shopping cart due to a 30-minute time limit, she bought 16 tickets.
It was only when she was about to purchase that she noticed the service fees, which were around 24% of each ticket. One $2,100 ticket had a $505 service fee, bringing the total cost to $2,604.63.
"It's insane," she said of the fee. "I don't understand what the service is."
As the locals-only sale kicks off and Southern Californians have their first chance to buy tickets to the Olympic Games, some fans are wide-eyed at the high fees on all tickets and the prices in general, which start at $28 but go up to more than $5,500 a pop. Opening Ceremony tickets start at $328.68
The service fees aren't a surprise add-on. The price fans see when browsing the site is the total cost, including the fee. Still, some who bought in the first phase of sales were surprised when they saw the fees add up.
One user on Reddit of shared their cart of 10 tickets, which added up to $11,264. That included $1,038 in fees alone. Commenters responded in shock and awe.
Service fees are standard in ticket sales, but the percentage they charge can vary widely. High fees have been a source of ire for music and sports fans for years. A 2018 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the average fees on a primary ticket market were 27%.
LA28 did not respond to LAist's requests for details on the service fee, like what it pays for or why it's a percentage rather than a flat rate.
Not everyone seemed bothered by the prices. Some people LAist spoke with opted for only $28 or similarly priced tickets, even if it meant missing some of the biggest Olympic events. One user on Reddit said they purchased 18 tickets for around $550.
"I went with all $28 tickets," they wrote in the online forum about the Olympics. "I got women’s soccer, gymnastics, beach and regular volleyball, track and field, baseball and a few others."
For some, the ticket process, the prices and the dense web of events to choose from made it too hard to pull the trigger.
Jeff Bartow of Sierra Madre made a spreadsheet with some competitions he was interested in seeing before he logged on to buy tickets Friday.
"So many times, so many schedules, so many events," Bartow said. "I think I initially thought I was going to go to a bunch, but thinking about how crazy it's going to be … I might be a little more limited."
This is just the first ticket drop. There will be more opportunities to buy tickets in the months to come — and on a resale market that launches in 2027.
Some ticket-buyers told LAist they already were contemplating which tickets they'd keep and which ones they'd re-sell, just minutes after buying them.
Keep up with LAist.
If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.
In the more than two months since the Department of Justice released its latest batch of files on the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors have not brought any new charges based on the documents, despite federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continuing to demand accountability.
The backstory: Since the release of the files in 2025 and 2026, there have been no related arrests in the U.S. However, the disclosures have led to some resignations and other reputational repercussions for some high-ranking Americans. The lack of arrests in the U.S. contrasts to the fallout in the U.K., where investigators have pursued charges related to corruption, not sexual abuse, in their dealings with Epstein. Two former government officials — former Prince Andrew and ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson — were arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
Lack of evidence: In the U.S., top Justice Department officials have said that they found no evidence compelling enough to pursue further charges related to Epstein, and that the public can make their own assessments based on the disclosed documents. In a statement to NPR, Justice Department spokesperson Katie Kenlein said that "there have not been additional prosecutions beyond Epstein and Maxwell because there has not been credible evidence that their activities extended to Epstein's network."
In the more than two months since the Department of Justice released its latest batch of files on the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors have not brought any new charges based on the documents, despite federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continuing to demand accountability.
The more than 3 million pages of documents include accusations by alleged victims of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's abuse and thousands of emails and photos showing Epstein associated with prominent figures. The files indicate that many of these people maintained contact with the disgraced financier long after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to sex crimes that involved minors. Appearing in the files is not necessarily an indication of criminal wrongdoing.
The release of the Epstein files came after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which forced the Justice Department to make public all documents it held related to Epstein.
The lack of arrests in the U.S. contrasts to the fallout in the U.K., where investigators have pursued charges related to corruption, not sexual abuse, in their dealings with Epstein. Two former government officials — former Prince Andrew and ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson — were arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he is now known, has denied wrongdoing and has not been formally charged. Mandelson has also not been charged, and lawyers for Mandelson have said that the arrest was prompted by a "baseless suggestion."
In the U.S., top Justice Department officials have said that they found no evidence compelling enough to pursue further charges related to Epstein, and that the public can make their own assessments based on the disclosed documents.
In a statement to NPR, Justice Department spokesperson Katie Kenlein said that "there have not been additional prosecutions beyond Epstein and Maxwell because there has not been credible evidence that their activities extended to Epstein's network. However, if prosecutable evidence comes forward, the Department of Justice will of course act on it as we do every day in sexual trafficking and assault cases across the count[r]y."
On Thursday, President Trump announced that Attorney General Pam Bondi is out of the top job at the Justice Department, following bipartisan criticism over her handling of the Epstein files.
NPR asked four former prosecutors and one former law enforcement officer why there may not have been enough evidence to levy additional charges. Here's what they said.
Prosecutors must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt"
Prosecutors must prove to a jury that a person committed a crime "beyond a reasonable doubt," according to Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
"One of the biggest misconceptions people have is how difficult it is to charge and convict somebody for a criminal case," said McQuade, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
A prosecutor's ethical responsibility is to charge cases only if they believe there is enough evidence for a conviction, McQuade said. Documents, including emails, jokes, and even plane itineraries, can be a place to start, but, alone, they are not enough to prove guilt, McQuade said.
"What you would need [is] rock solid evidence," McQuade said. "You can't charge someone for a crime without sufficient evidence, and I have yet to see evidence of a crime involving an Epstein associate that has gone uncharged."
Based on his understanding of the case, Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown Law, said he agreed that prosecutors who investigated Epstein's alleged associates "may have believed that they couldn't persuade a jury beyond a reasonable doubt." He said problems with witness credibility or certain forensic evidence can prevent a case from moving forward.
The U.K. cases are focused on corruption
In the U.K., the two people arrested are being investigated on suspicion of "misconduct in public office." McQuade said the U.S. does not have a single equivalent federal law. Instead, the U.S. prosecutes public corruption through statutes that focus specifically on crimes such as bribery and extortion.
After the release of the latest files, British police began investigating Andrew's correspondence with Epstein when Andrew was a U.K. trade envoy. At that time, Andrew allegedly shared government itineraries, investment plans and notes from official foreign trips with Epstein. The information may have been covered by the United Kingdom's Official Secrets Act.
Similarly, Mandelson has been accused of passing confidential government information to the late sex offender when Mandelson was a U.K. Cabinet minister.
Meeting the burden of proof is especially challenging for sex crime cases
Victim statements are essential for establishing basic elements, such as the timeframe of events, required to build sexual assault cases, said Diane Goldstein, a retired police lieutenant from California and the executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. But a victim may be reluctant to come forward because of a fear of retaliation, not believing the police can help, believing it is a personal matter, or not wanting to get the perpetrator in trouble.
McQuade noted that in some sex trafficking cases, especially those in which a perpetrator is in a position of power, victims may experience intimidation or threats that prevent them from speaking out.
Victims also may be hesitant to move forward with allegations because they fear having to testify at trials where defense attorneys may attempt to poke holes in their allegations, McQuade said.
Goldstein said that for sex crime cases to advance, investigators need to follow certain policies and procedures. "If you don't have a legitimate police investigation to start, you're not going to get any type of criminal filing," Goldstein said.
Other potential charges are also a difficult path
Prosecutors may have considered pursuing charges of criminal conspiracy related to sex trafficking against people associated with Epstein, said Jessica Roth, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. FBI documents in the files relating to its investigation into Epstein's crimes identify certain people as "co-conspirators."
But Ankush Khardori, a senior writer and columnist at Politico magazine who worked as a federal prosecutor on financial fraud cases, told NPR those identifiers are not "formal accusation[s]" and are simply part of "interim documents."
"The FBI does not determine who is a co-conspirator," Khardori said. "That is a legal judgment that prosecutors make."
But for those conspiracy cases, "criminal intent," in particular, is difficult to establish, said Roth, who worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York for seven years. Criminal conspiracy charges "would require knowledge and intent on the part of each individual who was charged," Roth said. If a person who communicated with Epstein had some suspicion that he was engaged in illegal activity, that alone would not be sufficient evidence to press charges, she said.
Investigators may have considered charges related to criminal tax violations, McQuade said. But the statute of limitations has likely ended on those cases, she said, meaning that prosecutors can no longer bring charges.
The current evidence lacks context
Legal experts say the haphazard way the documents were released and redacted makes it difficult for the public to understand why no additional charges have been filed.
Roth, the Cardozo law professor, said the information is in "isolation," without the appropriate context. "We'll see an individual photograph that looks perhaps incriminating. We'll see an email that looks incriminating, but we don't necessarily have everything that was said before and after that email and that exchange," Roth said.
One document that could explain why no charges were pursued, according to Butler, is a heavily redacted DOJ memo naming "potential co-conspirators" of Epstein. "The parts that should indicate why the department declined prosecution on any alleged co-conspirators other than Ghislaine Maxwell [are] redacted," said Butler, the Georgetown law professor and a former federal prosecutor.
Butler said those redactions are "unusual" because they do not appear to follow the permissible reasons for redactions in the Epstein documents. Those reasons include confidentiality for Epstein's alleged victims, or anything that would compromise an ongoing investigation, Butler said.
"When the Justice Department grudgingly releases information when pressed by politics or forced by Congress, it also creates the impression that they have something to hide," Butler said. "That there is some cover-up going on."
Copyright 2026 NPR
Nearly 30% more students in Los Angeles County experienced homelessness from 2022-23 to 2023-24, making it the county’s highest rate in the past five years and far outpacing the rate of homelessness across the state in the same timeframe, as the resources to identify and support this student population have decreased.
Norwalk-La Mirada Unified: Researchers found that Norwalk-La Mirada Elementary Unified School District had the highest rate of student homelessness in the county — 1 in 3 students, meaning that over 4,700 students were identified as experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year out of a total cumulative enrollment of about 15,600.
Underidentifed students: Researchers also found that the Transformation of Schools focuses on the lack of dedicated funding for school staff to identify and support homeless students. Students and families facing homelessness do not always self-identify, whether due to fear, shame or being unaware that their housing situation is considered homelessness
Nearly 30% more students in Los Angeles County experienced homelessness from 2022-23 to 2023-24, making it the county’s highest rate in the past five years and far outpacing the rate of homelessness across the state in the same timeframe, as the resources to identify and support this student population have decreased.
Researchers found that Norwalk-La Mirada Elementary Unified School District had the highest rate of student homelessness in the county — 1 in 3 students, meaning that over 4,700 students were identified as experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year out of a total cumulative enrollment of about 15,600.
The city of Norwalk, where the district is located in the eastern region of the county, was sued by the state in 2024 for banning emergency shelters and other support services for people experiencing homelessness. Last year, the state reached a settlement with the city, which was forced to overturn the ban and put $250,000 toward building affordable housing.
Student homelessness is defined differently under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law that requires every public school to count the number of students who are living on the street, in shelters, in motels, in cars, doubled up with other families, or moving between friends’ and relatives’ homes.
As a result of this expanded definition, McKinney-Vento includes doubled-up students in the count of homelessness. Doubled-up is a term used to describe children and youth ages 21 and under living in shared housing, such as with another family or friends, due to various crises.
There were a few other patterns seen in the L.A. County data analyzed by the UCLA researchers:
Latino students were disproportionately more likely to experience homelessness: they represent 65% of the county’s student population, but 75.5% of student homelessness
A third of homeless students were in high school
Many districts with the highest rates of homelessness had higher school instability but lower dropout rates
While McKinney-Vento has an expanded definition that includes more types of homelessness than several other definitions, identifying students remains difficult.
The second report from the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools focuses on the lack of dedicated funding for school staff to identify and support homeless students. Students and families facing homelessness do not always self-identify, whether due to fear, shame or being unaware that their housing situation is considered homelessness under McKinney-Vento.
“A lot of these young people are dealing with a lot of trauma, so they don’t want to be identified. They don’t want to be pointed out; sometimes it’s scary for them, because they think we’re going to report them to the Department of Children and Family Services,” said L.A. County Office of Education staff interviewed for this report.
School staff, known as homeless liaisons, who work with homeless students received a historic influx of federal funds during the Covid-19 pandemic — $98.76 million for California, out of $800 million nationwide, from the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth.
That funding has since ended, and there is no other dedicated, ongoing state funding set aside solely for the rising number of homeless students. This has led districts in California to “heavily depend on highly competitive and unstable federal streams,” the UCLA researchers wrote. Those federal streams have become increasingly precarious as the federal administration last year sought policy changes that would shift how they are structured.
