The Brief

Despite Superintendent Alberto Carvalho’s promise two years ago to settle the conflict, Los Angeles Unified continues denying millions of dollars in federal aid that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles argues it is owed for ongoing services to low-income students in Catholic schools. The archdiocese maintains that the district is diverting the money to bolster its students’ funding.

Both the California and the U.S. departments of education have chastised the district for breaking federal regulations in dealings with the archdiocese. Now, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has ordered the district to turn over documents and data that it withheld.

That information, which should illuminate the district’s decisions, could either restart stalemated talks or lead the archdiocese to turn to the courts to order a settlement after seven years of fighting.

“We do not believe further litigation is necessary, and we can achieve equity for non-public school students,” said Paul Escala, the archdiocese’s superintendent of schools. “However, we will pursue all means to see that all students receive their legally entitled services.”

Title I rules for private schools

Congress requires that low-income students in private and public schools receive equivalent Title I funding to pay for counseling, tutoring, teacher aides, and learning specialists. The dispute with LAUSD concerns how much money should be allocated for the archdiocese’s schools and how to ensure the funding gets to the students.

Under Congress’s rules, private and religious schools do not receive Title I funding directly. Instead, districts determine the eligibility of private and religious schools within their borders, administer the funding, and provide the services directly or through vendors after consulting with the schools. Los Angeles Unified, until recently, hired the Title I staff and put them on its payroll (see Frequently Asked Questions by the California Department of Education).

The system worked amicably for years. Districts can choose from several ways to determine Title I eligibility, and LA Unified picked the fairest and most efficient method for the 100-plus schools within the archdiocese with low-income students, Escala said. The district used census data to determine the number of Title I-eligible students in an attendance area, then awarded a proportionate share of the money to archdiocese schools. Long Beach Unified uses the same method.

More paperwork, more confusion, less money

Then in 2018-19 and the following year, coinciding with the new administration of Superintendent Austin Beutner, the district chose another option for calculating private schools’ eligibility — student registrations for the federal school lunch program. Not only did this method require a lot more time, paperwork and verification by the schools, but the district changed the reporting rules several times with little notice and failed “to engage in timely and meaningful consultation,” the California Department of Education concluded in a 58-page report issued in June 2021 in response to a formal complaint by the archdiocese.

Los Angeles Unified’s Office of Inspector General removed hundreds of students’ eligibility after examining parents’ school lunch forms in the two dozen schools it chose to audit and failed to include any students from other schools it didn’t audit.

The result was to cut Title I funding to the archdiocese by more than 92%, from about $9.5 million in services 2017-18 for 102 schools to $767,000 for fewer than two dozen schools, according to Escala. In 2023-24, funding crept up to about $2 million for 43 schools. The district cut its total share allocated to private schools from between 2% and 2.6% of about $291 million to 0.5%, according to the California Department of Education.

‘Totally unreasonable’ demands

The state Department of Education harshly criticized the district. The timetable for demanding documentation was “totally unreasonable,” and the district “engaged in a pattern of arbitrary unilateral decisions” and failed to justify its decisions to the archdiocese, the report said.

In ignoring the archdiocese’s Public Records Act requests for documentation to justify the cuts, the district took a “hide-the-ball approach (that) breached both the spirit and the letter” of the law, the report said.

The spirit of Title I, as stated in the law’s preamble, Escala said, is to maximize participation. The intent of other options like surveys and free-lunch verification is for schools to prove they have higher proportions of low-income families than neighboring schools, he said.

LAUSD is doing the opposite, Escala said.

“The district’s using these other methods as a way of filtering and screening and reducing participation,” he said. “You’re extracting children you know qualify simply because a “t” wasn’t crossed or an “i” wasn’t dotted. It is beyond reproach, because they (LAUSD officials) don’t apply the same standard to their own schools.”

LAUSD had an obligation to give (the Archdiocese) the requested information. LAUSD’s hide-the-ball approach breached both the spirit and the letter of the duty to consult. — The California Department of Education in a June 2021 rulingLA Unified declined to comment on the state’s report, and last week, a spokesperson wrote in an email that “Los Angeles Unified does not typically comment on pending or ongoing litigation.”

Districts have a financial incentive to minimize private schools’ funding eligibility. The federal government awards the total Title I funding to districts, which determine how much should be allocated for services to private and religious school students. Lawyers for the archdiocese point out that the less money that districts award, the more Title I funding they can spend on their own students.

The district appears to understand this, said Kevin Troy, an attorney for the archdiocese, citing a Jan. 29, 2019, email from the principal auditor of the district’s Office of the Inspector General to the archdiocese, in which the auditor stated that the archdiocese “receives over $10 million of Title I funds from the LAUSD every year — money that could otherwise be allocated to LAUSD schools.”

“There’s a moral and ethical question on the table,” Escala said. “You (LA Unified) have got children in need, and you’re not serving them right,” he added, referring to students in archdiocese schools.

The impact on one high school

Mark Johnson, principal of Bishop Mora Salesian High School, has seen the effect of the cuts on students. Before the cutback, Title I paid for a reading intervention teacher and part-time aide who worked with 40 to 50 students weekly — about 1 out of 8 students at the all-boy, 400-student school in the low-income Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. Although on the district’s payroll, the teacher fit in like any other staff member, building personal relationships with the students and collaborating with their teachers.

“She (the teacher) had her own classroom and was just a regular teacher as far as any of our kids knew,” he said. She would work with the lowest-performing students on basic reading comprehension skills. “If they were working on a tough piece of literature, she would help them break it down so that they could write an analytical paragraph or essay.”

Pulling out students also reduced the class size for the remaining students, he said. Now, there is only enough money for a two-day-a-week coach from a contractor who sees at most a dozen students a week.

“We’re serving kids who are significantly behind grade level and families that deal with poverty and all the things that come along with that,” Johnson said. “So this kind of antagonistic relationship that has developed (with the district) ultimately hurts kids.”

The California Department of Education gave the district 60 days from its June 2021 ruling to consult with the archdiocese to fix deficiencies pointed out in the report and then recalibrate the proportional share of Title I funding for archdiocese schools. It ordered the district to begin providing the increased services for 2020-21, the next school year.

Instead, the district appealed the decision to the U.S. Department of Education, which issued its own findings in November 2023. In his decision, Adam Schott, deputy assistant secretary for policy and programs, found that the district could justify reducing the eligibility count based on its analysis of parents’ forms. But by doing that, they cut the funding for the dozens of schools that the district did not audit. He credited the district with consulting with the archdiocese to an extent, but said the district’s overall approach in demanding documentation was “inconsistent and confusing.”

Schott also ruled that the district violated federal regulations by claiming it didn’t have to share data with the archdiocese on how much it spent on Title I services for students and how much was unspent at the end of each year.

In December 2021, the archdiocese sued the district in Los Angeles Superior Court for ignoring multiple requests under the state Public Records Act to turn over Title I spending records and other relevant information. The court held off ruling until the complaint process played out.

On July 16, Judge Curtis Kin ordered the district to turn over all relevant documents, emails and records to the archdiocese by Aug. 20 and to pay $82,141 to the diocese in attorneys’ fees.

An appeal to Superintendent Carvalho

Weeks after he started work as Los Angeles Unified superintendent in February 2022, Alberto Carvalho told EdSource he had familiarized himself with the case and added, “I’m going to resolve this issue sooner rather than later.” He declined to elaborate due to litigation.

“What I can tell you,” he added, “is that we need more objective, transparent tools by which we assess and fund this guaranteed federal entitlement that’s driven by poverty.”

Escala said he remains hopeful. “I believe that Superintendent Carvalho has the ability to direct his staff towards that outcome. I have a great degree of confidence that when brought to him, this can get adjudicated appropriately.”

Take accountability and move forward.

Those were the two points Los Angeles Fire Chief Jaime Moore hit repeatedly when speaking with LAist’s Larry Mantle this week.

On taking accountability, Moore said hazardous conditions and decisions made before the Palisades Fire erupted a year ago meant “our firefighters never had a chance” to arrest the fire that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of structures.

On moving forward, he emphasized that reform is already in the works.

“Things have changed since the Palisades Fire, and we're going to continue making big changes in the Los Angeles Fire Department,” said Moore, who was selected for the LAFD top job by Mayor Karen Bass in November.

Here are three takeaways from the interview, which aired on AirTalk on Tuesday.

1. Staffing decisions hampered fire response

The LAFD uses a so-called pre-deployment matrix to set firefighter staffing levels ahead of high-risk weather.

According to the department’s after-action report, however, staffing levels on the day the Palisades Fire began fell short of the LAFD standard for extreme weather conditions. The National Weather Service had warned of low humidity, high winds and dry vegetation, what it calls a “particularly dangerous situation.” It’s the highest level of alert the agency can give.

Despite the high risk, the LAFD report said the decision not to deploy more firefighters in advance was in part made to save money.

Moore said Monday that the department has updated its policies to increase staffing for especially hazardous conditions, but he said he doesn’t believe additional resources would have stopped a fire of the magnitude that leveled the Palisades.

To suppress that kind of fire, he said, the department would need to pre-deploy resources across the city’s vast geography — to places like Baldwin Hills, Franklin Canyon, the Hollywood Hills, the Palisades, Porter Ranch and Sunland-Tujunga.

Moore said the department has already made new policies to call for more resources when the Weather Service issues a “particularly dangerous situation” alert.

2. LAFD is mostly an urban firefighting department

Moore referenced a key finding of the after-action report regarding a lack of training in wildland firefighting, which contributed to confusion and struggles to effectively utilize resources during the fire.

Wildland fires pose a number of challenges that are different from what firefighters face in urban environments. Those include the need to coordinate a large number of resources over vast areas, all while dealing with fast-moving flames that can rapidly tear through dry plants and structures.

The department found in its report that fewer firefighters were trained in fighting these wildland fires in recent years and that “leaders struggled to comprehend their roles.”

Some leaders in the department had “limited or no experience in managing an incident of such complexity,” the report said. And some reverted to doing the work of lower positions, leaving high-level decision-making positions unfilled.

“What we're doing now is really furthering that training and reinforcing that education with our firefighters so that they could be better prepared,” Moore said on AirTalk.

3. Changes to the after-action report

Early versions of the after-action report differed from the version released to the public in October, a fact that was first reported by the Los Angeles Times. The Times also reported that Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, who wrote the report, wouldn’t endorse the final version because of the changes.

Moore acknowledged to the L.A. Board of Fire Commissioners at a Jan. 6 meeting that the report had been watered down.

“It is now clear that multiple drafts were edited to soften language and reduce explicit criticism of department leadership in that final report,” Moore told the commissioners. “This editing occurred prior to my appointment as fire chief, and I can assure you that nothing of this sort will ever again happen while I am fire chief."

Some changes were small but telling. A section titled “Failures” later became “Primary Challenges.”

Moore told LAist that changes between versions “ made it easier for the public to understand,” but an LAist review found the edits weren’t all surface-level.

In the first version of the report, the department said the decision not to fully pre-deploy all available resources for the particularly dangerous wind event “did not align” with their guidelines for such extreme weather cases. The final version said that the initial response “lacked the appropriate resources,” removing the reference to department standards.

The department also removed some findings that had to do with communications.

One sentence from the initial version of the report said: “Most companies lacked a basic briefing, leader’s intent, communications plan, or updated fire information for more than 36 hours.” That language was removed from the final report.

LAist has asked the Fire Department for clarification about why these assertions were removed but did not receive a response before time of publication.

Olympic organizers announced Tuesday that registration to buy tickets will run through March 18, with sales beginning in April. LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover said that locals will get the first bite at the apple.

The registration period opens 7 a.m. Wednesday.

" Our host city communities here in Los Angeles and Oklahoma City will have the opportunity to be a part of a local presale," Hoover said outside the Coliseum while surrounded by Olympic athletes from Games past. "With our thanks and as part of our commitment to making sure that those who live and work around the games, where the games will take place, can be in the stands and cheer in 2028."

Olympic organizers also provided more details on ticket prices for the first time. One million tickets will sell for $28 a pop and around a third of tickets will be under $100, according to LA28 Chair Casey Wasserman.

That means the majority of tickets to the Olympic Games will run into triple digits. If the World Cup is any indication, some tickets could get astronomically pricey.

Interested fans can go to LA28.org to register. Those who are selected will get an email with a time slot to purchase tickets.

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors took a step toward banning ICE from unlawfully operating on county-owned property and to post signage designating those spaces as “ICE Free Zones.”

The board unanimously approved the motion at Tuesday’s meeting, directing staff to draft the policy.

The draft could include requirements for county employees to report to their supervisor if they see unauthorized immigration activity on county property.

The city of Los Angeles passed a similar order last July, which strengthened protocols that prohibit ICE from operating on city-owned property. The agenda staff report points to an “ICE Free Zone” ordinance passed by the city of Chicago in October.

Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Solis co-authored the motion.

Horvath said the county will not allow its property to be used as “a staging ground for violence caused by the Trump administration."

Solis added that their action as a board could have a ripple effect on other city councils and local governments.

“Even though it's taken us this long to get here …I think it's really important for our communities to understand what we're saying is you don't have the right to come in and harass people without a federal warrant,” Solis said. “And if you use our property to stage, then you need to show us documentation as to why.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in an X post that the county cannot exclude federal agents from public spaces.

"Anyone who attempts to impede our agents will be arrested and charged, including county employees," Essayli said in the post. "We have already charged more than 100 individuals for similar conduct."

Since June, ICE raids have ramped up across the nation, heavily targeting certain immigrant communities like those in Los Angeles.

The motion directs the draft to include language that prohibits all types of ICE operations on county land, including staging and mobilizing without a warrant.

The motion cites an incident on Oct. 8, when county officials say federal agents raided the Deane Dana Friendship Park and Nature Center in San Pedro, arresting three people and threatening to arrest staff.

The motion also requires that the county post 'Ice Free Zone' signage on all of its properties.

Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center of Human Rights and Constitutional Law, told LAist the policy is enforceable under Fourth Amendment case law.

“You have to make sure that when you post that signage … that means that you routinely, or semi-routinely, assess who's coming in to the property, so that you can control access,” Perez said. “But if ICE shows up with a warrant, with a subpoena, then all bets are off, and they can enter into the property and do what they need to do.”

Perez said the county has moved “incredibly” slow on this issue.

“It's embarrassing that the county is moving six months later, given how we've been facing violent, aggressive, invasive and illegal raids now for so long here in Southern California,” Perez said, adding that local governments have not been fast or creative enough in protecting immigrant and refugee communities.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, one of the region’s largest immigrant advocacy groups, supports the motion.

"We do not want our county resources being used for federal immigration enforcement activities, which disrupt, uproot, and terrorize our communities,” Jeannette Zanipatin, policy director for CHIRLA, said in a statement. “It is important for all public spaces to be really safe for all residents.”

County staff have 30 days to draft a plan to implement the new policy.