The Brief

California’s school finance watchdog agency has found the Los Angeles Unified School District is at high risk of financial insolvency.

The Financial Crisis and Management Assistance Team presented its analysis at Tuesday’s school board meeting.

“FCMAT’s role is not to determine which programs the district should preserve, which reductions it should make or what agreements it should reach with the labor [unions],” Jennifer Noga, an intervention specialist with the agency, told the board. “That is 100% a local decision. Our goal is to help identify the fiscal risk and help the district understand what needs to be addressed to restore fiscal stability.”

How did the state make its determination?

The agency’s analysis of LAUSD is based on a series of questions the agency has identified as risk factors for insolvency.

The analysis found that LAUSD's deficit spending, declining enrollment and increasing costs of employee salaries and special education put the district at risk of exhausting its reserves by the end of next school year.

The analysis found LAUSD is at a “moderate” risk of insolvency, but ultimately received a “high” rating because a previous evaluation by the Los Angeles County Office of Education automatically triggered a more severe label. (That LACOE evaluation is also what triggered the state evaluation in the first place.)

Union pushback

United Teachers Los Angeles, the union that represents LAUSD educators, said in a memo to the board and in public comments that FCMAT’s analysis penalized the district for paying teachers more and overstated financial risk.

“There are different ways to tell a story with numbers and statistics and data, and we just think that FCMAT is presenting the most austere version of that and we have to fight back against that,” said Julie Van Winkle, the union's vice president. “There is declining enrollment in the district, and who is going to want to put their kids in schools if we keep cutting programs because of austerity?"

The district has a plan to cut spending, which includes eliminating thousands of jobs and funding for high-needs schools. The district must also bargain with employee unions before implementing furlough days planned for the 2027-28 school year.

The fans in the stands. The players on the gridiron. The Friday night lights.

Those were just some of the scenes inside Weingart Stadium, where the Garfield Bulldogs defeated the Roosevelt Rough Riders 28-24 at the 91st East LA Classic.

The event drew crowds in red and gold, blue and white, all there to cheer on their team and claim Eastside bragging rights.

Here are some of the night’s best moments.

The fans in the stands. The players on the gridiron. The Friday night lights.

(

Violet Rodriguez-Aceves

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

The fans in the stands. The players on the gridiron. The Friday night lights.

(

Andrew Lopez

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

The fans in the stands. The players on the gridiron. The Friday night lights.

(

Andrew Lopez

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

The fans in the stands. The players on the gridiron. The Friday night lights.

(

Fernando Rodriguez

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

The fans in the stands. The players on the gridiron. The Friday night lights.

(

Fernando Rodriguez

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

The fans in the stands. The players on the gridiron. The Friday night lights.

(

Andrew Lopez

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

The fans in the stands. The players on the gridiron. The Friday night lights.

(

Fernando Rodriguez

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

The fans in the stands. The players on the gridiron. The Friday night lights.

(

Andrew Lopez

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

(

Fernando Rodriguez

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

The fans in the stands. The players on the gridiron. The Friday night lights.

(

Violet Rodriguez-Aceves

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

The fans in the stands. The players on the gridiron. The Friday night lights.

(

Violet Rodriguez-Aceves

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

The fans in the stands. The players on the gridiron. The Friday night lights.

(

Andrew Lopez

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

The post The best moments from the 91st East LA Classic appeared first on LA Local.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office dropped its felony body armor charges against Michael Angel Alvarez on Wednesday. Alvarez was sentenced to time served on a lesser charge — a probation violation. He had served more than 100 days in jail earlier this year while awaiting trial.

Why Alvarez’s arrest made headlines: Alvarez was working as a city-contracted peace ambassador in MacArthur Park when he was arrested by federal agents in May. Federal and county prosecutors each brought felony charges against him, claiming he was in possession of body armor as a violent felon.

Bill Essayli, who leads the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A., pointed to the case on social media to criticize city officials for allowing taxpayer money to be “shelled out to a convicted gang murderer.”

About his criminal record: Judges in federal and state court have now dismissed prosecutors’ felony charges against Alvarez, after U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang found on Sept. 9 that Alvarez did not have a violent felony conviction. Alvarez was 15 when he committed a gang-related murder. He was tried and convicted as an adult in 2002. After a change in state law increased the age at which minors could be sentenced as adults to 16, Alvarez’s case was sent back to juvenile court, and he was released in 2024. At that point, he had served more than 20 years.

Most serious claims haven’t materialized: Though federal prosecutors made headlines claiming in court documents that Alvarez was “leading a violent street gang, while claiming to be a gang interventionist for the City,” they have not filed charges related to those claims.

An all-ages play about the life of Dolores Huerta and other under-told stories of the farmworker labor movement is back on tour in Los Angeles.

The show's extension had been announced prior to the news that Huerta died Wednesday, Oct. 28., at her Bakersfield home. She was 96 years old.

“There's this perception that farm work was only done by men,” said playwright Eliana Pipes. “There were women on the fields, there were women on the picket lines, and there were women in leadership in the United Farm Workers movement.”

Center Theatre Group commissioned ¡Sí Se Puede! from Pipes in March 2025 and it debuted in L.A. this spring.

The next free, family-friendly shows are:

• Wednesday, Nov. 4, 6:30 p.m., at the Ketchum-Downtown YMCA: 401 S. Hope St. Los Angeles
• Saturday, Nov. 7, 2 p.m., at Christine Emerson Reed Park: 1133 7th St., Santa Monica
• Saturday, Nov. 14, 2:30 p.m., at the East L.A. Civic Center: 4801 E. 3rd St., Los Angeles
• Sunday, Nov. 15, 4 p.m.,  at Latino Health Access: 450 W. 4th St., Santa Ana

Right around the year 2000, there was a club night in Hollywood called Clockwork Orange. Fans of The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Bauhaus and other bands came for the DJ’s mix of their favorite songs but also for a vibe that welcomed people regardless of race, ethnicity or sexual and gender identity.

“I was a pretty shy person, and so that was a place where I could sort of be myself and express myself,” said Azalea Camacho, a regular there in those days.

She had just graduated from Workman High School in the City of Industry and was also clubbing at rockabilly music nights in Rosemead and goth club nights in downtown L.A.

Camacho said there was lots of memorabilia from those times, such as photos taken in and outside the clubs, ticket stubs and promotional fliers. They're the physical remnants of those supportive communities built around music and enjoyment, but many of them languish in shoeboxes and storage units, at risk of being lost — along with the memories attached to them.

Cal State LA has hosted Sounds of the Underground Archive for the last four years. It's an opportunity for people to donate their underground music scene memorabilia.

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Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, University Library, California State University, Los Angeles

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“I think the danger is maybe those stories are not being told, or people don't know about the story,” she said.

Keeping stories alive

More than two decades later, Camacho is now in a position to make sure those stories are kept alive. She’s head of special collections and archives at the university library at California State University, Los Angeles.

Four years ago, she and library staff created an annual day for area residents to donate or digitize memorabilia for their Sounds of the Underground Archive. This year it's on Thursday, Nov. 5. They’ll accept physical donations, but they’ll also have a scanner to digitize printed material, so people can keep items that are precious to them.

Camacho is hoping this year will bring in a bumper amount of memorabilia. It's taken time to get the word out, she said.

“From the actual community archiving day [we’ve collected] maybe 100 or less than 100 items. … It's not a lot,” she said.

She said they're on the lookout for a wide range of mementos, including:

• Fliers
• Handbills
• Zines
• Newsletters
• Posters
• Set lists
• Photographs (prints, negatives or digital files)
• Cassette tapes, CDs, or vinyl records
• Ticket stubs
• Wristbands
• Band merchandise (stickers, buttons, patches, T-shirts)
• DIY press kits or liner notes and correspondence (letters, emails, messages related to music scenes)
• Venue or collective ephemera (membership cards, schedules, announcements and more)