The Brief

The post LAUSD sets virtual meetings on the Lineage fire before students return to class appeared first on LA Local.

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is inviting parents and guardians to virtual meetings on its plans for the new school year following the Lineage Logistics warehouse fire in Boyle Heights.

District officials will update families on what to expect on the first day of school and answer questions about preparations for students returning to campus.

According to a district statement, LAUSD’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety will monitor air quality in and around school sites, “with additional testing planned before the first day of school.” To improve air quality inside classrooms, the district said it is adjusting airflow “to limit outdoor contaminants” and upgrading or replacing HVAC filtration systems where needed. (Read more about the schools LAUSD will be monitoring).

Several LAUSD schools sit near the warehouse, including Eastman Elementary and Stevenson College and Career Preparatory Middle School, both less than a mile from the fire site. With the new school year approaching, many parents have questions about how the fire cleanup may affect students’ return to campus.

Alma Lagunas, an East L.A. resident, said her sons, 10 and 17, would typically spend the summer playing soccer or basketball and riding their bikes in the neighborhood. But since the fire broke out June 17, the family has been isolated behind closed doors and windows. Going outside has meant smoke, unhealthy air and now, being hit with the worsening smell of rotting food. Lagunas worries about what will happen if the warehouse is not cleared by the time her 10-year-old starts fifth grade at Eastman.

The first day of classes for LAUSD is Aug. 12 — two days before the 45-day cleanup deadline set by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. At a town hall meeting July 9, Lineage said it would do its best to meet the deadline, which the company acknowledged was “aggressive.”

Below are the meeting dates and information on how to join.

Meeting Details

All meetings will take place virtually at 6 p.m. and can be found at bit.ly/LAUSDBHUpdates2026.

Meeting dates:

• Wednesday, July 29, 2026
• Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026
• Monday, Aug. 10, 2026

For more information and resources, visit https://east.lausd.org/apps/news/.

Boyle Heights Beat reporter Laura Anaya-Morga contributed to this story.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

A new California Supreme Court ruling on retirement pay for public employees centered on a small amount of money — just one week’s salary for a retired attorney — but it had the potential to be a much costlier decision for government agencies and taxpayers.

The question: How much accrued vacation time can retiring public employees cash out at the end of their careers in ways that boost their pensions? Former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown took aim at that perk, among others, in his 2013 pension reform law, but it was unsettled in courts until now.

The California Supreme Court’s answer: Under Brown’s law, employees can count toward their pension formula whatever amount of vacation their contract allows them to cash out in a single calendar year.

That sounds simple, but some California government workers end their careers with two months or more worth of accrued vacation time — enough to cash out in increments over several years and increase their retirement pension by hundreds of dollars a month.

The case that reached the state Supreme Court turned on retired Ventura County Counsel Leroy Smith, who designated October 2019 to October 2020 as his final year of civil service and cashed out 240 hours of accrued time off over that period.

His contract allowed him to cash out only 200 hours a year and his pension plan, the Ventura County Employees’ Retirement System, would not count the extra 40 hours toward his retirement formula.

Smith and other retired Ventura County employees argued Brown’s law did not specify that the hours had to be in a single calendar year, and they should have been able to count leave cashed out over any 12-month period.

A state appeals court ruled against them two years ago. Two public safety unions appealed that decision, bringing the case to the high court. They argued that Brown’s pension law does not refer to a calendar year when it discusses cashouts.

“If the Legislature intended to restrict annual leave cashouts to a calendar year, it would have used the term “calendar year” instead of “each 12-month period,” attorneys for Ventura County attorneys and sheriff’s deputies wrote in a briefing to the court.

But the Supreme Court found otherwise, pointing to what justices described as the common meaning of a 12-month period and the broader context of what Brown and lawmakers were trying to accomplish when they passed the pension reform law.

At the time, California’s major pension funds were recovering from two successive blows — first the dot-com bust and then the Great Recession. The law Brown signed trimmed benefits, compelled employees to work longer to earn a full retirement and required them to kick in more money from their paychecks to fund their pensions.

The Supreme Court ruling conceded that Smith wanted just 40 additional hours to count toward his pension, but the justices noted that other employees could go much further if California allowed workers to “straddle” a calendar year with vacation cashouts. They could effectively double the pensionable cashout if they timed it correctly.

The justices wrote that it would be “perhaps not so inconceivable as to rank as absurd” to think the Legislature intended for that kind of pension boost in the pension reform law.

The new decision applies to workers and retirees enrolled in California’s county-run pension plans. They operate outside of the statewide pension funds, which are the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the California State Teachers Retirement System.

A group of county pension funds wrote a brief to the court urging judges to limit pensionable cashouts to a single calendar rather than a movable 12-month period. They wrote it would be expensive for them to revise retiree benefits if the rules change.

“There is no reason to cause this confusion and undue burden to the (county retirement) systems,” they wrote.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Federal immigration agents used racial slurs, including “wet” and “tonks,” to identify people to target while sweeping through Los Angeles last year, according to text messages cited in a new court filing asking a federal judge there to bar agents from racial profiling.

Plaintiffs in the Vasquez Perdomo vs. Noem case filed a motion for a preliminary injunction on Monday, arguing that agents had conducted an “ongoing campaign of suspicionless and discriminatory detentive stops” across the Central District of California even after the high-profile street raids of summer 2025 had ceased. As one ICE agent admitted in a deposition, “We’re [still] doing the same thing [as “Operation at Large”] just with a different name.”

The filing includes evidence from months of discovery, including body camera footage and depositions of agents, ordered by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong after the U.S. Supreme Court stayed an earlier temporary restraining order in the case last September.

Attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union, a coalition of advocacy organizations and private attorneys argue in the court filing that the new evidence undercuts the government’s argument to the Supreme Court that agents were relying on specific intelligence about individuals instead of race when deciding who to stop.

In bodycam footage, according to court documents, a Border Patrol agent at the Hollywood Home Depot says, “There was a guy, I’m pretty sure he’s wet he was just sitting in that minivan.”

In one text message cited in the filing, an agent says, “Yeah, just plug us in wherever you see some tonks and we’ll jump out.” In another message, an agent describes seeing “tonks everywhere selling food.”

“Tonks” is a derogatory term Border Patrol agents have used, reportedly derived from the sound a heavy item like a flashlight makes on a migrant’s skull. In 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency for Border Patrol, issued guidance explicitly stating “the term ‘tonk’ is not appropriate” due to its derogatory connotation, according to emails and text messages disclosed to HuffPost under the Freedom of Information Act.

In one deposition an immigration agent bluntly says that the suspicious appearance they look for is “Older Hispanic male.” In their filing, plaintiffs' attorneys argue that immigration agents engaged in unlawful practices by not developing "pre-stop individualized, particularized assessment of reasonable suspicion" of targets, but instead used racial profiling to detain anyone they believed to be low-income and Latino. Such actions swept up U.S. citizens and violated the Constitution’s prohibition on unreasonable search and seizures.

The court filing made public Monday reveals a May 2025 directive from Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters telling field officers to “turn the creativity knob up to 11” and arrest more “collaterals.” That’s the agency’s term for people who aren’t the original target of an operation but who are encountered in the process.

ACLU attorneys said the agents’ practices, including racially profiling Latinos, were condoned and directed from the top.

“This was not a rogue method of operationalizing agency orders; it was precisely what agency leadership desired,” the filing states.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said ICE doubled the ranks of its field teams, “thanks in part to recruitment ads employing white nationalist messaging.” The filing says some plaintiffs and organizational members, including those who are U.S. citizens, have already been stopped more than once.

While the filing relies on communications from agents’ cell phones, most agents involved in the L.A. raids have yet to turn over their devices.

Last month, during a contentious hearing, Frimpong weighed whether to hold the federal government in contempt for failing to comply with a court order to turn over agents' cell phones.

The government said in court that of 1,400 Border Patrol agents involved in Los Angeles operations last year, more than half reported using their personal cell phones.

The federal government said that it asked agents to upload any data from their personal phone to a government repository, a compromise created with its union designed to limit any workplace grievances. But only 88 agents volunteered to turn their phones in for forensic imaging, and none of them have been imaged yet.

Plaintiffs argued that the government deserved sanctions by “straight-up saying they will not comply with an order because their employees might complain if they do.”

Progress on the government phones hasn’t gone much faster. In court, lawyers for the federal government revealed they have only been imaging 3 government phones every 2 weeks, without knowing the exact number of government phones but estimating around “200-300 still to go.” That’s a rate that would take the government close to four years to comply with the court’s order.

“There’s enough to suggest that this is a system-wide practice of identifying people through racial slurs,” said Mayra Joachín, an attorney with the ACLU.

CalMatters has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Southern Californians are in for a little relief this week after another muggy weekend.

The region is expected to experience a slight cooling trend over the course of the week, though forecasters say conditions will still be hotter than normal and continue to put people at risk of heat-related illness.

Highs in most of L.A. and Orange counties will be in the 80s and 90s through Friday. Some interior parts of L.A. County, much of the Inland Empire and the region’s deserts are expected to hit triple digits.

Don’t get too used to the — somewhat — milder temperatures either. Forecasters say the heat will soon return with a vengeance.

The high pressure system that’s been driving much of this summer’s weather has retreated eastward, forecasters say, allowing for the cooling trend. But the system is expected to migrate back toward Southern California this week and bring the heat with it.

Temperatures will tick up steadily from Friday to Sunday, when parts of the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys are expected to reach 100 degrees or higher.

Dangerous beach conditions

Meanwhile, forecasters continue to warn of dangerous currents and surf at the beach.

For the last several weeks, Southern California’s beaches have been pummeled by strong rip currents, big waves and surging tides.

Officials are particularly concerned about the hazardous conditions as people flock to the beach to escape the heat

Lifeguards performed nearly 2,000 rescues over the weekend in L.A. County alone, according to the county Fire Department’s lifeguard division.

And the upcoming weekend is expected to present similar hazards for beachgoers. South-facing stretches of coastline will experience the most severe currents and waves.

Officials recommend checking surf conditions before heading to the beach and, if you do go in the water, stay near lifeguards and listen to their instructions. It’s also a good idea to stay off of tidal rocks and jetties.

If you end up caught in a rip current while swimming, relax, stay calm and float as much as possible to conserve energy. To escape the current, swim parallel to the beach, then at an angle toward the beach. Do not try to swim against the current. If you can’t reach the shore, call and wave for help.

The surf conditions are being driven by a series of tropical storms churning hundreds of miles to the southeast in the Pacific Ocean.

One of them, Hurricane Fausto, has been pushing its storm surge towards Southern California since it formed off Central America on July 16. Since then it has moved toward Hawaii, becoming a Category 2 hurricane over the weekend. It is now weakening.

This week, another storm, Hurricane Genevieve, is running parallel to the Mexican coast about 500 miles off the tip of Baja California. Genevieve was briefly classified as a Category 5 hurricane on Monday.

The storms, along with swells originating from storms in the Southern Hemisphere, have combined to create dangerous surf here.

“It's been definitely a long period of very frequent and hazardous rip currents,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Lewis.

There is also a chance the surge could cause minor coastal flooding.