The Brief

There are at least 63,000 students with disabilities in the Los Angeles Unified School District. For these students, the district's cellphone ban has implications beyond missing texts from friends or losing the option to scroll social media at lunch.

Families told LAist their child’s phones help them control medical devices, cope with anxiety and regulate their emotions.

While students with disabilities can be exempted from the Los Angeles Unified cellphone ban, that requires families to assert their rights.

Without an exemption, students can lose access to a valuable learning tool and the policy may also put students in the awkward position of sticking out from their phone-less peers.

When Faith returned to her sixth-grade class at Walter Reed Middle School in January, she learned students would soon have to lock their phones in pouches all day to comply with a new district-wide policy.

“I was concerned for students like me,” Faith said.

The North Hollywood student uses her phone to play Roblox, text her friends and to control a small electronic device that helps her hear. Faith’s cochlear implant sits over her left ear and translates sounds into electrical impulses that her brain interprets as sounds and speech.

We wanted to understand how students like Faith and their families are navigating the ban, which went into effect last month.

Pico-Robertson mom Ingrid Levy said she’s heard about the challenges cellphones pose at her daughter’s middle school, from bullying to students recording fights, but is also comforted by being able to reach her child, who experiences anxiety, in real time via her smartwatch.
“How do we find that balance?” Levy said. “It's tricky.”

Here's what we learned:

What rights do students with disabilities have?

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act guarantees students with disabilities a “free appropriate public education.” Still, many families struggle to access services that would help their children learn, and Congress has never fully funded special education as intended when the law first passed in 1975.

“The goal of all of those laws really is to be sure that students with disabilities are not unfairly segregated, or removed from the classroom, or from the learning that their peers get on the basis of their disability,” said Denise Marshall, chief executive of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a national nonprofit that advocates for the legal and civil rights of students with disabilities and their families.

Special education law protects students’ rights to use technology that helps them in the classroom. For example, Los Angeles Unified provides more than 3,000 students with devices, such as iPads that translate text to speech, through its assistive technology program.

Marshall is skeptical of cellphone bans. She said that they may be a barrier, because families have to assert a right and go through the process rather than it being automatic.

Marshall said families of students who want to ensure their child’s access to personal technology can call a meeting of their child’s IEP or 504 Plan team to discuss adding an accommodation that specifies how the device is used to benefit the student.

But she’s also worried that students may feel too uncomfortable being the only ones in their class with access to a phone to use the device to their benefit.

“It's just the overall dampening of an effective, promising technology,” Marshall said.

Faith and her dad, John Perron, outside Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood.

(

Zaydee Sanchez

/

LAist

)

Marshall said while there is validity to the argument that students may use technology in inappropriate and distracting ways during the school day, many use their cellphones in a way “that enhances their learning,” for example, by taking photos of assignments or leaving themselves a voice note during the school day.

And she said a ban does little to prepare young people for the future.

“The goal is supposed to be to graduate students, all students, from school who have the tools and the skills they need to be successful in the workplace in community living and interacting with other people,” Marshall said. “Artificially limiting their access to the number one way that people communicate in our society these days, to us, makes no sense.”

Students navigate a new reality

As Los Angeles Unified developed the cellphone policy last year, Faith’s dad, John Perron, contacted his school board member.

“I wanted to make sure that the parents and the students' voices made it to the top,” Perron said. He’s the former chairman of a committee that advises the district on special education.

“Devices have their place,” Perron said. “And some people have more of a need.”

The resolution that expanded the district’s existing cellphone restrictions included several exceptions, including for students with IEPs or Section 504 Plans.

However, the existence of either document doesn’t grant a student automatic access to their phone. Perron shared a district flier with LAist that read “exceptions can be made if the student’s IEP or Section 504 plan outlines specific needs for the device to support the student’s unique needs related to their disability.”

An LAUSD spokesperson said in a statement that students and families should discuss their child’s needs with their teachers, IEP teams and coordinators. The district could not provide the number of students who have received an accommodation related to their personal devices.

Perron said his request that Faith continue to have access to her phone to control her cochlear implant and apps that translate audio to text were met with “zero resistance.”

Faith holds up her cellphone pouch (bottom) next to her brother's, which is locked for the duration of the school day.

(

Zaydee Sanchez

/

LAist

)

The school issued Faith a pouch with a Velcro closure that allows her to access her phone if needed. Her peers’ pouches are sealed magnetically and can only be unlocked by a staff member.

The exception doesn’t go unnoticed by Faith’s friends.

“There's a joke where whenever I'm using my phone, they'll be like, ‘This is a rare sighting, a phone in the middle of the school day,’” she said, with a smile.

She recognizes that her exception has limits — “I can't just open YouTube.” Faith said she’s already had to contact her dad several times to bring her a new battery for her implant.

Other families are taking more of a “wait-and-see” approach.

Crissy is a freshman at Venice High School and has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

Her IEP allows for her to take a “breather” from class and listen to music if she needs to calm down, but she says she hasn’t done that since the school’s full-day cellphone ban started in February.

“If I asked for permission, I feel like I'd be OK with it,” Crissy said. “But if I didn't, I feel like I'd be scared to do it.”

At Venice, students are expected to store their phones in locked cases that remain in their sixth period classroom.

The Los Angeles Unified School District budgeted $7 million to purchase pouches and other storage devices, like the lockers seen here at Venice High School, to enforce the all-day cellphone restriction. In February, a district spokesperson said in a statement that about half of schools chose to rely on the “honor system" and purchase no additional equipment.

(

Brian Feinzimer

/

LAist

)

“Immediately in my brain, I was like, ‘I'm not gonna put it in the locker,’” Crissy said. “Anything could really happen. So I don't really trust it enough to be in a locker.”

LAist visited Venice classrooms in February and interviewed several students and teachers. At the time, the majority of students opted not to turn over their phones.

Crissy’s mom, Cristal Perez, said she does not encourage phone use during class, but supports her daughter’s decision.

“She's allowed to turn it off and turn it back on after school,” Cristal said. “I think that should be fine. She should not have to hand it over.”

Crissy said since the ban was implemented, her weekday screen time is down to about an hour a day. On the weekends, she spends about 8 hours a day on her phone, often watching make-up tutorials on TikTok and teen romances, including the “To All the Boys” series, on Netflix.

“When I'm on my phone, it just feels like I'm in my own world,” Crissy said. “It's just like a little safe space for me and it's something that can keep me entertained and calm.”

Catherine O’Hara, best known for her roles in Schitt’s Creek, Beetlejuice and Home Alone, died Friday after a brief illness.

While O’Hara was a cast member on Saturday Night Live for just one week, she got her big break as an original cast member of the Canadian sketch comedy show Second City Television (or SCTV), alongside Eugene Levy, who’d become a frequent co-star.

Her comedic genius, musical prowess and complete dedication to the characters she portrayed appeared in dozens of films and television shows over her over 50-year acting career, from voicing the speaking and singing roles of Sally and Shock in The Nightmare Before Christmas, to the inexplicable dialect created for Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek, to the sobering performance of a therapist practicing in a post apocalyptic world in The Last of Us.

Here are some of those essential O’Hara performances that highlighted her comedic genius and made her so iconic.

‘Perma-Lacque’ commercial (SCTV)

O’Hara had her hand in many roles across her eight-year long tenure in SCTV. One that still makes the rounds on social media is “the woman with indestructible hair.” Note the utter seriousness in her performance that sells the joke!

Herb Ertlinger’s fruit wine commercial (Schitt’s Creek)

A favorite O’Hara moment as her beloved Schitt’s Creek character Moira Rose is when she delivers a performance of "craftsmanship" and “quality” for a TV commercial on fruit wine. Has anyone ever mispronounced words so perfectly?

“Day-O” scene (Beetlejuice)

If you want a master class in lip syncing, look no further than O’Hara as Delia Deetz singing “Day-O,” while possessed at the dinner table in 1988’s Beetlejuice. Her body and lips are in sync, while her eyes give a whole other performance of panic!

O’Hara’s ‘Kevin!’ screams (Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York)

It wouldn’t be a complete list without including O’Hara playing one of our favorite 90’s on-screen moms screaming “Kevin!” to the camera. The original is iconic, but we might prefer her delivery in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Who else could play a mom who forgets her kid twice and we still love her?!

A mighty kiss (A Mighty Wind)

In the 2003 Christopher Guest mockumentary A Mighty Wind, O’Hara plays Mickey Crabbe, one half of a now broken-up married folk duo. A climax of the film is when Crabbe and Mitch Cohen (played by Eugene Levy) reunite onstage, performing their song “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow.” As the audience waits with baited breath, they share a poignant kiss. It’s a feel-good moment and a Julia Paskin favorite!

Hundreds of protesters began assembling in downtown Los Angeles Friday afternoon in one of several planned demonstrations calling for the withdrawal of federal immigration agents.

The downtown protest officially started at 1 p.m. in front of City Hall.

It’s one of several “ICE Out” events expected in the L.A. region and around the country Friday and Saturday in response to the Trump administration’s immigration actions, which many have described as overreaching and unconstitutional.

Crowds of protesters participate in an "Ice Out" demonstration in downtown Los Angeles.

(

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

/

AFP

)

Other local protests are planned in Santa Monica, Culver City, Torrance, El Monte, Monrovia and Pasadena.

The protests are also in response to the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti — both fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis — and the deaths of people held in ICE custody.

People partake in a "National Shutdown" protest against ICE in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Jan. 30, 2026.

(

Charly Triballeau

/

AFP via Getty Images

)

Shortly before 2 p.m. there were at least a thousand people assembled, and the crowd appeared to be growing moment to moment. Many people on Spring Street in front of City Hall gathered around a flatbed truck that was being used as a makeshift stage.

Many carried signs with the words, "ICE OUT" and other pointed messages referencing the immigration raids and President Donald Trump.

There did not appear to be a large law enforcement presence early Friday afternoon. LAist reporters spotted a few Los Angeles city police and county sheriff's vehicles around the crowd perimeter.

Matt Carlin, 48, of Los Angeles said he decided to participate in the protests because he believes "a line has been crossed" by federal authorities, whom he repeatedly called "fascists" and accused of acting as secret police. He said the deaths in Minnesota were "disgusting" and "upsetting," but were the logical progression of an administration that wants to rule by fear.

"It's unacceptable and it's time for people to stand up," he told LAist. "And I think doing it on a weekday sends a stronger message, and not shopping and not getting on Facebook and Instagram."

He said it's important to show supporters of the Trump administration that "we're serious about this."

Protesters descend on L.A. City Hall Jan. 30, 2026.

(

Genaro Molina

/

Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

)

Uma Sanasaryan, 50, said she is originally from the former Soviet Union. She said she has seen people get "snatched up" in her Atwater Village neighborhood — a violation of human rights.

"I am an immigrant myself and we literally escaped Soviet tyranny to come to the United States so that we could feel free and have the freedom of speech and, you know, the ability to pursue our dreams," she said. "To do things with our lives that we could never do anywhere else."

She said the country where she came to build her American Dream "collapse in the last 10 years" is "horrific."

Sanasaryan noted she is a naturalized citizen, but that doesn't ease her concern.

"They could come for me they could come for anyone," she said. "It doesn't matter anymore."

The Department of Homeland Security has said immigration agents were targeting violent criminals, but there has been ample evidence to the contrary.

Reports released last year noted that about half of the thousands of people held in ICE custody had no criminal convictions.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Canadian actress and screenwriter Catherine O'Hara has died at her home in Los Angeles following a brief illness, according to her agent and manager.

She was 71 years old and was known for absurdist comedy. She enjoyed a six-decade career in TV and film playing sometimes over-the-top, but endearing characters.

In one of her most memorable roles, O'Hara played the freaked-out mom of rascally son Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) in two Home Alone movies. Later, she portrayed the self-centered, whiny matriarch in the riches-to-rags TV sitcom Schitt's Creek — a role for which she earned an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award in 2020.

Catherine O'Hara and Macaulay Culkin in "Home Alone."

(

Don Smetzer

/

20th Century Fox/Alamy

)

She won her first Emmy in 1982 for writing on the Canadian sketch comedy TV series Second City Television, or SCTV. She cofounded the show, and created characters such as the show biz has-been Lola Heatherton.

"I loved playing cocky untalented people," O'Hara told Fresh Air in 1992.

On SCTV in the '70s and '80s, she teamed up with another Canadian comic actor, Eugene Levy. Together, they — along with an ensemble — went on to perform in a string of films by director Christopher Guest.

O'Hara and Levy were dog trainers in the Guest's mockumentary Best in Show. And they were a folk-singing duo in A Mighty Wind.

Moira Rose (Catherine O'Hara) and Johnny Rose (Eugene Levy) in "Schitt's Creek."

(

Pop TV

)

O'Hara and Levy also acted together as the parents in Schitt's Creek. More recently, O'Hara acted with another Canadian, Seth Rogen, in his Apple TV comedy The Studio. She played a movie studio head who gets pushed aside.

O'Hara was born and raised in Toronto, and got her start as an understudy for Gilda Radner at the Second City Theater in Toronto.

She reportedly met her production designer husband Bo Welch on the set of the 1988 movie Beetlejuice. She reprised her spiritually possessed role in the 2024 sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

Since the news of her death some of her famous friends have paid tribute to her online.

"Mama. I thought we had time. I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you. But I had so much more to say. I love you. I'll see you later." wrote actor Macaulay Culkin.
Copyright 2026 NPR

This story was originally published by The LA Local on Jan. 30, 2026.

Businesses across Los Angeles are shutting their doors on Friday for a national day of action against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a coordinated effort to stand in solidarity with people saying no to work, school and shopping around the U.S.

The “ICE Out” general strike and protests were organized in Minnesota after weeks of aggressive tactics by federal agents and the killings of two people. Immigration enforcement has also surged in L.A. this week, and flyers announcing a local day of action on Friday have blanketed many neighborhoods, as well as spreading online. A protest was also planned for Friday afternoon at L.A. City Hall.

In Boyle Heights, restaurants, coffee shops and retail stores began posting signs on their windows that read “TODOS CON MINNESOTA! FUERA ICE! No trabajo y no escuela.” Many, including Accúrrcame Cafe and Xtiosu, also shared messages on social media.

Picaresca Barra de Café announced it would be closed for business but open as a community space from 8:30-10:30 a.m.

“Instead of operating as usual, we’ll open the space as a community meeting point—a place for people to gather, make posters, connect, and support one another,” the business wrote in an Instagram post. “We’ll be providing materials where we can, along with free drip coffee, and holding the space intentionally and respectfully.”

Sandra Gomez, who runs a tiendita on Cesar Chavez Avenue in Boyle Heights, joined a protest in Boyle Heights on Wednesday and pledged to close her shop for the day.

Gomez spoke passionately about why it was important for businesses to take part in the action.

“We want to keep going and do our part so the country can move forward, but ICE has affected us,” she said in Spanish.

Melchor Moreno, the co-owner of La Chispa de Oro Mexican restaurant, decided Thursday that he would close on Friday.

Since last summer, his restaurant on Cesar Chavez Avenue has been strained by a lack of customers too afraid to leave their homes. Moreno said sales began picking up over the last few months, but recently tanked when the Eastside saw increased immigration enforcement activity.

“Normally, our lunch crowd is really busy,” he said. “But there are only two tables with people dining. No one’s been in here for the last two hours.”

It wasn’t an easy decision for Moreno, but his employees were urging him to close in a show of support for the community.

“I know it’s going to hurt financially, but something has to happen, something has to change,” he said.

Elsewhere in the city, the owners of South LA Cafe announced they’d be closing all five of their locations.

Celia Ward-Wallace, one of the cafe’s co-owners, said the cafe was intentional about its decision, knowing it would mean loss of revenue, hours for employees and a gathering place for South LA Cafe regulars.

But the shop wanted to make a bold statement with its large platform, she said.

“Our community needs to stand in solidarity,” she said, with the nation, with Minnesota, and with the city of L.A. and its people.

In Pico Union, La Flor de Yucatán Bakery owner Marc Burgos said participating in the shutdown was a way to stand with his customers and neighbors. Burgos’ father, Antonio Burgos, opened the bakery’s first storefront in 1971 at Pico and Union, then the business relocated in 1975 to its current home near Hoover and 18th streets.

“I want to stand united with my community against brutality and indignity, inhumane treatment,” Burgos said. “We’re located in a predominantly Latino neighborhood. Everyone fears being harassed, whether they’re here legally or not.”

Semantha Norris contributed to this report.