The Brief

As another Los Angeles Unified school year starts Wednesday, district leaders say they hope to maintain recent academic progress while they also contend with a series of budget cuts needed to make ends meet.

"The decisions will be hard, but we cannot lose sight of what defines us," said Andrés Chait, the district’s new superintendent, in a July speech kicking off the start of the new academic year. "We are the system that lifts students to opportunity, turns potential into achievement, creates spaces of belonging, healing [and] growth."

The country’s second-largest school district resumes classes as federal immigration raids continue along with the detention of area parents and children.

What we are hearing

For the most part, LAUSD students told LAist they’re experiencing the usual mix of nerves and excitement associated with the first day of school.

They’re also aware that local and national politics are reshaping their education, including who is in the classroom.

Andrea, a sophomore at Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Lincoln Heights, said there were days last year when so many students were absent that teachers would pause their lessons.

“What's the point of teaching it if half the class is gone?” Andrea said. “That really makes everybody behind.”

Educators have patrolled the neighborhood near Andrea’s school to notify families of any ICE activity nearby.

“That definitely made us feel more safe and more respected in the school,” she said. Throughout the year, she noticed more of her peers return to class.

A looming shortfall

LAUSD’s spending is budgeted to exceed revenue by $2 billion this school year. For the third consecutive year, the district plans to pay the difference with reserves that were largely built up by one-time federal pandemic relief dollars.

The district’s financial projections show LAUSD will be short $231 million by November 2027.

The L.A. County Office of Education, which oversees the finances of local districts, intervened in July after the board approved new labor contracts for LAUSD’s largest unions.

“The financial reality before the District raises serious concerns regarding its ability to meet its financial obligations,” wrote Debra Duardo, L.A. County Superintendent of Schools, in a July 2 letter.

If district officials decide to request an emergency loan from the state, it would trigger a rare takeover that would strip LAUSD’s board of decision-making power and likely take years to undo.

The county appointed a fiscal advisor to the district, but did not grant that person the authority to override the board or superintendent’s decisions.

The county directed LAUSD to provide more details about the district’s plan to stabilize the budget through $3.6 billion in cuts spread out over three years. District officials said their plan envisions furloughs for all employees in the 2027-28 school year — a move that requires negotiating with the unions that represent those employees.

“I think what they expect to see from us… is frankly a prove-up around the fiscal stabilization plan,” Chait said. “They want to see that we can actually implement what we put into that plan.”

District staff have previously said that plans to stabilize the budget could lead to more than 6,000 layoffs, amounting to more than 10% of LAUSD’s current workforce.

One unknown is how future state funding will change the district’s budget projections. While California education funding has risen in recent years, the state plans to hold back $3.9 billion for schools and community colleges in the most recent budget.

“No one is asking the state for anything more or less than what we are due,” Chait said. “We are not asking for a handout.”

New, but familiar leadership

Though Chait is new to the district’s top job, he is familiar to many from his nearly three-decade tenure as a district educator and administrator.

District principals greeted Chait with a standing ovation at his first opening-of-schools address in July.

“As I was preparing for this talk, I was thinking about how to introduce myself,” Chait told a crowd of several hundred administrators at James A. Garfield High School. “But then I realized you don't introduce yourself to family.”

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Andrés Chait speaks with educators and support staff at Pacoima Middle School on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026.

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Allen J. Schaben

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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Chait highlighted preliminary results from the state’s standardized reading and math tests that show a third consecutive year of improvements.

However, even with that progress, the majority of students do not meet the benchmark for either subject. It’s unclear how LAUSD’s performance compares to the state because those results have yet to be released.

Chait is the first LAUSD insider to serve as superintendent in a decade. His hire came after two high-profile external hires — Alberto Carvalho, a former Miami schools leader, and Austin Beutner, an investment banker and former publisher of the L.A. Times.

LAUSD’s elected seven-member board, which has the final say on the district’s financial decisions, is unchanged. Voters re-elected incumbents to this year’s three board races from a sparse field of candidates in June’s primary contest.

Ongoing enrollment challenges

LAUSD is projected to enroll 378,000 students in transitional kindergarten through 12th grade this school year.

As birth rates decline, fewer students are enrolling at schools throughout the state. The drop in enrollment is steeper in areas with high costs of living, such as L.A.

California funds schools based on an average of how many students show up to class each day, with additional money for every student in the district who is low-income, an English-language learner, unhoused or a foster youth. Over time, fewer students could lead to less funding.

District leaders attributed last school year’s larger-than-expected drop in students to the “fear and instability” associated with federal immigration raids.

Even students who continued to attend school reported changing their behavior in response to the raids.

Alvira, a junior at Lake Balboa College Preparatory Magnet K-12, is an immigrant from Bangladesh. She started carrying a photocopy of her passport until she could get a REAL ID.

“Just in case anything happens, I can prove that I'm a citizen,” Alvira said.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman promised at a Tuesday night town hall that MacArthur Park will see “amazing progress” in public safety before the 2028 Olympic Games.

Several community members told LAist they have seen crime return to the Los Angeles park after months of joint drug enforcement operations by the Los Angeles Police Department and federal agencies. Those efforts led to dozens of arrests for alleged drug sales in the area.

An LAPD captain attending the town hall confirmed to LAist that the department is aware of renewed safety problems.

Hochman acknowledged those concerns and said the recent operations made progress and created an opportunity for lasting change.

“If we keep this focus and the energy on this area, MacArthur Park, Skid Row and everything in between,” Hochman said, “then we will see amazing progress before the Olympics, and that is actually a promise.”

Hochman previously promised, during a drug enforcement operation on June 4, to have a picnic at the park on Labor Day. Hochman told attendees he kept that promise when he held an event at the park on Sept. 5 with other local and federal law enforcement officials.

As district attorney, Hochman works with law enforcement agencies to prosecute criminal cases in L.A. County. He said that it will take more work from policymakers and community members to remove the open-air drug market that has been entrenched there for decades.

The area is represented by L.A. City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, County Supervisor Hilda Solis, state Assemblymember Mark González and state Sen. María Elena Durazo. Staff members from some of those offices, and the mayor’s office, sat in on the town hall organized by the local nonprofit California Rising.

“Feel free to put the fire under the feet of our politicians,” Hochman told about two dozen residents who attended. “All too often it is easy to spend some effort on something and then get distracted and spend some effort somewhere else.”

'Temporary' relief

Some residents and business owners agreed with Hochman that the large-scale drug enforcement operations from March through June made the area feel safer, at least for a while.

“It was temporary, but we got to see, actually, families at the bus stops with their kids — before it wasn't like that,” Elaine Alaniz told LAist Tuesday. “I think it does help us, but on the other hand I still think that we need more help. It's not just a one, two, three-day thing.”

Alaniz lives nearby and is the president of the Westlake North Neighborhood Council, which begins a block northeast of MacArthur Park.

She said she has seen some crime move away from the park and into the surrounding neighborhoods.

Capt. Ben Fernandes, who leads LAPD’s Rampart Division, said the earlier operations were successful, but there have been some setbacks.

“We made a lot of headway in the beginning,” he said. “There are some issues that we've had some repopulation, especially with addicts.”

Fernandes said that the department will continue to arrest people suspected of selling drugs near the park, while connecting people who are addicted with services to help them get sober and off the streets.

A call for community involvement

Hochman and Fernandes each emphasized that making MacArthur Park a safe and welcoming place can’t be done by law enforcement alone.

“My advice: take the park back — it's your park,” Hochman said at the town hall, calling for community organizations to plan regular outings there. “That starts to send a message that the community really cares about this park.”

He asked that performers like Justin Bieber, who played an impromptu set in the park last month, have more events there as well.

Fernandes said people can get involved to change perceptions about MacArthur Park so it's no longer thought of as a place to go to score drugs.

“What we need to do is — we as a community — come together and show [people using drugs] that it's not their place to go,” he said. “That you're going to be there with your children, with your parishioners, with your friends, with your family.”

Inglewood city officials are launching an audit of their financial relationship with SoFi Stadium and claiming the stadium could owe years of ticket taxes, one month after a judge voided the 2015 contract that brought the stadium to Inglewood. 

The Inglewood City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to commission the audit. Mayor James Butts said the move is a necessary next step after the court ruling, which threw the terms of the financial relationship between the city and Hollywood Park stadium development into question. 

Millions of dollars are at stake for both the city and the stadium businesses. City officials say that the ruling means a cap that limited the amount of admissions tax that Inglewood could collect no longer applies. They also plan to investigate the authenticity of $376 million worth of infrastructure bills Hollywood Park claims the city owes. The findings of the audit could also factor into discussions of how the city will address its current $30.8 million deficit.

The City Council motion — put forward by Butts and co-sponsored by Councilmember Dionne Faulk — requires the city attorney to retain an accounting firm to conduct the audit and report back to the public on its findings within 30 days. It set aside $325,000 from the city’s General Fund to pay for the audit. You can read the city’s full explanation of the audit here.

Butts, who was at the city’s helm a decade ago when developer Stan Kroenke brought his Hollywood Park pitch to Inglewood, said city officials built what they thought was a partnership with their stadium counterparts.

But that partnership has crumbled. Since last summer, the city and stadiums have been slugging it out in a complex series of court cases over the stadium’s contract and Inglewood’s network of video billboards. The conflict has spilled over into the Nov. 3 election via ballot measures that would change the city’s commercial advertising and ticket tax rules. 

The audit approved by the City Council on Tuesday will dig into the entire financial relationship between the stadium and city since 2015, unpacking what is owed and what was received from taxes on everything from tickets to parking. City officials plan to continue auditing the taxes on a quarterly basis into the future.

Still, it’s not guaranteed the city would be able to force the stadium development to pay any debt the audit does claim. Hollywood Park could still appeal the court ruling that voided its contract with Inglewood, while Butts said the city wants to negotiate a new contract to replace it. 

A Hollywood Park spokesperson said the stadium development has lived up to its financial obligations, including paying all of its taxes.

“This is yet another thinly veiled attempt to distract from scrutiny surrounding the City’s own fiscal mismanagement and the questionable actions of its Mayor,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement.

Some locals at Tuesday’s meeting said during public comments they were baffled why the city hadn’t set up an audit process earlier.

“We have needed an audit from day one. We can’t sit here and claim we didn’t know or have an inkling what we were doing with Hollywood Park,” Diane Sambrano said. 

Exterior of Sofi Stadium in Inglewood

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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Speaking during the meeting, Butts said the audit was triggered because of the void left by the development agreement and because major events including the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Olympics are about to hit Inglewood.

The mayor first claimed the development agreement was illegal in a letter written directly to Stan Kroenke last year, saying the city’s lawyers made the determination while researching billboard litigation.

Millions in tax revenue at stake

After the judge ruled in agreement with the city, Butts told The LA Local that city officials were still researching the specific implications of the court’s ruling. In Tuesday’s council motion, city staff highlighted what they say is one major change they’ve discovered: There’s no longer a limit on how much admissions tax the city can collect.  

Inglewood collects a 10% tax on tickets sold at SoFi Stadium, but the 2015 initiative that brought the stadium to the city put a cap on that revenue, starting at $15 million a year and increasing annually with inflation. 

The admissions tax cap also happens to be the subject of the current ballot Measure AT. WOW Media, the billboard operator allied with the city in its dispute with the stadium, is funding a campaign in favor of the initiative.

Admissions tax has been a sizable revenue stream for the city — bringing in an average $20 million a year since SoFi Stadium opened — but city officials have said it could be significantly bigger. A city analysis of Measure AT estimated that getting rid of the cap could bring in as much as an extra $50 million in future years. The city did not estimate how much admissions tax revenue it has missed out on while the development agreement was in effect.

The Inglewood audit seeks to clarify basic questions about how taxes are assessed on ticket sales and whether those taxes are actually forwarded to the city. Officials say it will provide transparency about ticket sales, pricing and fees, which have been heavily scrutinized in recent years across the state. 

Gray gets support on proposal for future billboard revenue audit

Councilmember Gloria Gray attempted to amend the audit motion Tuesday, asking the city manager to also audit the revenue the city gets from billboard fees.

“I believe the same standard of financial transparency should apply to every city agreement,” Gray said.

Though her motion didn’t receive a second, Councilmember Eloy Morales said he’d support putting a billboard revenue audit on the council’s agenda in the future. 

“I think we all support all those audits,” Morales said. 

Gray’s move was a rarity for a council that seldom debates motions during public meetings and almost always votes unanimously. The councilmember is currently running for mayor against Butts.

Inglewood pulls in as much as $8 million a year from billboards, according to budget records. Much of that comes from a series of deals the city cut with WOW Media, allowing the billboard company to construct and operate the billboards on public medians and sidewalks. In return, WOW gives the city a cut of ad revenue along with other concessions.

The post Inglewood is investigating if SoFi Stadium owes years’ worth of ticket taxes appeared first on LA Local.