The Brief

When schools reopened in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, school officials warned parents to keep their kids home if they showed even the slightest sign of illness. Now, as we head into the third school year with COVID, the messaging has changed.

“My advice on keeping children home from school now is similar to what was in place pre-pandemic,” Dr. Smita Malhotra, chief medical officer for the Los Angeles Unified School District, wrote in an update to parents and caregivers.

Parents are now being told to send their children to school if they are unwell, but keep them home if they have more serious symptoms.

“It is not practical for working parents to keep children home from school for every runny nose, nor is it in the best interest of children to continue to miss school after pandemic school closures,” Malhotra wrote. “If your child has a mild runny nose or cold symptoms that are not bothering them, and they test negative for COVID-19, send them to school. Your child can wear a mask at school when they have these mild symptoms.”

This guidance is significantly different than in past years when parents were told that any illness meant keeping kids at home.

“I completely agree with LAUSD’s message,” said Dr. Anuradha Seshadri, internal medicine and pediatrician at UCLA Health Century City. “It has been shown to improve their psyche and emotional well-being by seeing their friends at school, interacting, coming back and being a part of extracurricular activities, getting that exercise that they need, and just social stimulation is very, very important for one's health.”

We’re in a quieter phase of the pandemic, she says, and between the availability of vaccinations, home testing and telehealth visits, Seshadri is comfortable with the district’s recommendations for most kids.

At-home COVID testing is a must

She does have some concerns about the policy and how it could hurt the health of an immunosuppressed child.

“If a child is at higher risk for possibly being hospitalized, whether (because) they are immunosuppressed, if they're on cancer medications, or they have sickle cell, or they're diabetic, or extremely obese, then they need to be a little bit more cautious.”

Seshadri said children shouldn’t be treated in isolation. Time and again, grandchildren with a mild COVID case infect grandparents or other immunosuppressed adults.

“When the kids get sick, it's not just the kids getting sick,” she said. “They come back and spread it to family members.”

At-home testing, she says, is key.

“Even with mild symptoms, I think it would benefit not only the child, but other people to just rule out COVID with the antigen test, Seshadri said. “Parents and families need to maintain good hygienic measures at school and preventative measures so that if there is a chance that you had COVID, I would say implement the testing measures that we have.”

What do multiple COVID infections do to kids?

Last August and September, TK-12 schools in L.A. County reported more than 1,100 COVID clusters — or groups of three or more potentially connected cases over an eight-week period, according to data from Public Health.

Children are the least vaccinated age group in L.A. County. Just 2.5% of children six months to 4-years-old are up to date on their COVID shots, followed by 7% of 5 to 11-year-olds and 11% of 12 to 17-year-olds.

Studies have shown that repeat COVID infections in adults can spell trouble. A 2022 study found multiple cases of COVID in adults can increase risk in many areas, including potential cardiac, pulmonary or neurological problems.

Dr. Seshadri said we don’t know how multiple COVID infections could affect children or their developing organ systems, including brain development.

“We’re still in the learning phase right now,” she said.

Can children get the newly formulated COVID shot this fall? 

The CDC expects the updated vaccine rollout to begin the third or fourth week of September, meaning pharmacies will likely start offering them in October, but who will be eligible for the shot is still up in the air.

The Food and Drug Administration is waiting on safety data from pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna for their respective updated COVID shots. Once the FDA has approved the shot, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will likely call a special meeting to review the data and make recommendations on the dosage size and which age group will be able to get the shots.

There are COVID vaccines available right now. Children six months and older can get the bivalent vaccine, which Seshadri recommends.

“We saw a big uptick in child vaccinations in June, parents were interested in getting them vaccinated before traveling,” she said.

How much COVID is there? 

Getting accurate data on COVID cases is harder now. The weekly data from L.A. County Public Health measure the number of patients in the hospital with COVID, including emergency room visits and COVID-positive ICU patients.

It does indicate an upward trend since the start of July.

L.A. County also does wastewater detection, which is an indicator of how much COVID is circulating in the community, which is also rising.

Should we treat COVID the same way we treat the flu?

COVID isn’t seasonal in the same way as other viruses like the flu and RSV. Symptoms for flu and COVID are very similar, making it hard to differentiate as a physician without a lab test.

LAUSD recommends that children should not go to school if they have these symptoms:

• Fever (100.4 F and above)
• Vomiting or diarrhea
• Severe pain
• Difficulty breathing 

Take them to their pediatrician, who can do one nasal swab that tests for the big three viruses — COVID, flu and RSV.

Health experts look to the Southern Hemisphere to help predict our coming flu season, and it’s been a busy one in Australia. They’ve had a lot of influenza A and B, which tend to target children, putting pressure on pediatric services. About 80% of hospital admissions have been in children, and Australian health authorities have been urging young people to get the flu vaccine after two deaths of school-aged children.

“We're already seeing some flu cases here itself, so we're prepping for the flu and RSV season,” Dr. Seshadri said.

L.A.’s status as a tourist destination as well as its dense population makes it important for children to get their immunizations and booster doses, she said.

“Los Angeles is special in the sense that it is a very big tourist area. Even if you're not traveling, or the schools don't recommend it, it’s still a good idea to get vaccinated. We get a lot of tourists here that bring in viruses and other communicable diseases. In daycares and schools, there's a lot of prolonged close contact and protecting your children is protecting your family,” she said.

A three-judge panel ruled Wednesday that the new congressional maps created by California voters in the fall are legal and should remain in place, handing a win to state Democrats who hope the new districts will swing five congressional seats for their party next year.

The ruling denies a request by California Republicans and the Trump administration for the federal court in Los Angeles to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the maps created by Proposition 50.

In the 117-page ruling, the federal judges rejected GOP arguments that the new maps amounted to racial gerrymandering, which has been prohibited by the U.S. Supreme Court. The panel ruled 2-1, with the two Democratic appointees ruling for California and Judge Kenneth K. Lee, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, dissenting.

In the opinion, Judge Josephine Staton wrote that the panel’s conclusion “probably seems obvious to anyone who followed the news” about Proposition 50 last year. She noted that during the campaign, no one ever described the new maps as racially motivated — including the Republican plaintiffs.

“No one on either side of that debate characterized the map as a racial gerrymander,” the opinion states, noting that the California Republican Party called it a “political power grab to help Democrats retake Congress and impeach Trump,” and Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi deemed it a “redistricting power grab” for political gain.”

The judges also rejected Republican arguments that the voters’ intent did not matter. The majority wrote that voters clearly were endorsing the argument that both sides were making: that this was a partisan power grab, aimed at giving Democrats a leg up in the midterm elections and counteracting what GOP-led states were doing with their own districts.

Democrats celebrated the ruling.

“Republicans’ weak attempt to silence voters failed. California voters overwhelmingly supported Prop 50 — to respond to Trump’s rigging in Texas — and that is exactly what this court concluded,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

Newsom pushed lawmakers to put Proposition 50 on a special statewide ballot after Trump set off a mid-decade redistricting scramble by demanding Texas redraw its maps to benefit Republicans.

In his dissenting opinion, Lee wrote that race “likely played a predominant role in drawing at least one district because the smoking gun is in the hands of Paul Mitchell,” referring to a Democratic consultant who helped draw the new lines.

Lee argued that Mitchell publicly “boasted” about boosting Latino voting power in the 13th Congressional District in theCentral Valley, and that voter intent should not be the only basis for the court’s decision.

“To be sure, California’s main goal was to add more Democratic congressional seats. But that larger political gerrymandering plan does not allow California to smuggle in racially gerrymandered seats,” said Lee, who wrote that Democrats likely wanted to create a Latino majority district “as part of a racial spoils system to award a key constituency that may be drifting away from the Democratic party.”

The ruling could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Congressional candidates have until March 6 to file papers to run for office in the June primary.

Huntington Beach’s controversial former city attorney is running for state attorney general.

Michael Gates officially launched his campaign today and he will be going up against the current Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Gates has been an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump and his policies — and a continuous thorn in the side of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is one of the most prominent critics of the president.

Gates was first elected city attorney in 2014 and easily won re-election twice since then. Over the years, Gates earned plenty of fans and enemies as he filed a barrage of lawsuits against California over state housing mandates and the city’s plans to require voters to show ID to cast a ballot, among other issues.

Gates left the city last year to work in the Trump administration and left his D.C. post in November to return to the beach city. He told LAist he missed Huntington Beach and his family and was hired back at the city as a chief assistant city attorney. The circumstances of his return made headlines.

In a video announcing his campaign, Gates said too many lawmakers in Sacramento spend their time "scheming" for ways to raise tax rates while leaving streets unsafe.

“California has lost its way," he said. "When I am your attorney general, we are going to be toughest on crime. ... We are going to restore public safety, law and order, up and down the state of California."

He said he would also prioritize election integrity and giving local cities (and not Sacramento) final say over construction. You can watch his full statement here:

Rene Lynch also contributed to this story.

Progressive forces in Los Angeles are taking aim at companies with bloated executive pay through a ballot initiative.

On Wednesday, a coalition led by hotel workers union Unite Here Local 11 launched a signature-gathering effort for a ballot proposition they called the "Overpaid CEO Tax." If the proposition makes the November ballot, it will ask voters to impose an additional city business tax on large companies with CEO pay that is exponentially higher than worker pay.

Representatives of some of Los Angeles' most powerful unions, including the Los Angeles teachers union UTLA, gathered in Hollywood to announce the launch. They spoke on the sidewalk outside of the Tesla Diner — a recently opened charging station and restaurant owned by world's richest man Elon Musk.

"A growing and dangerous divide is tearing Los Angeles apart. On the one side, corporate CEOs live in their own world," said Unite Here Local 11 co-president Kurt Petersen. "On the other side, workers … juggle two and three jobs, they make impossible choices between medicine and rent."

The initiative takes aim at big corporations. If passed by voters, the executive pay ordinance would impose an additional business tax on companies with at least 1,000 employees whose top executive makes more than 50 times the median worker pay in Los Angeles. Those funds would go toward low-income housing projects, sidewalk repairs and other projects.

The additional tax would be one to 10 times the typical city business tax. According to the city clerk's office, the current city business tax is between 0.1% and 0.425% of gross receipts.

The campaign is part of a bigger political fight over the coming Olympic Games and who will benefit from them.

The executive pay initiative is one of a series of competing ballot propositions launched by union and business interests after the Los Angeles City Council voted last year to raise the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers to $30 an hour by 2028.

That vote set off a cascade of responses from the companies it affected. A business group backed by Delta and United Airlines launched a referendum to repeal the wage increase. That effort eventually failed.

The fight around the so-called "Olympic wage" is still playing out. A coalition of business interests has introduced its own ballot initiative to eliminate the city business tax entirely. In December, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson introduced a motion to delay the $30 minimum wage by two years.

Campaigners for the executive pay tax will be on the ground as hype around the Olympics ramps up. Ticket registration opened for fans on Wednesday morning, the same day union leaders gathered in Hollywood.

To land the ballot initiative on the November ballot, campaigners have 120 days to gather around 140,000 signatures from registered voters in the city of Los Angeles.

Facing a loss of state and federal funding and increased costs, Los Angeles County officials are considering cutting homeless services and programs by more than 25% in the next budget year.

If approved next month, the spending plan presented to the Board of Supervisors Tuesday would trim $219 million from homeless services and programs, slashing county street outreach efforts in half and closing most of the sites for the Pathway Home encampment clearing program.

Several supervisors pushed back on aspects of the spending plan and urged county staff to find ways to avoid some of the proposed cuts.

“ I'm not particularly happy with everything that I'm seeing,” Supervisor Hilda Solis said. “I've heard from my providers that their people are disappointed.”

L.A. County’s new Department of Homeless Services and Housing drafted the spending plan. In a presentation to supervisors, officials said the deep cuts were necessary because of the rising costs of operating existing shelter beds and the loss of tens of millions in temporary state and federal funding.

The proposal comes after county voters approved Measure A in 2024 to increase the sales tax rate and double county dollars dedicated to addressing the homelessness crisis.

“This is really challenging, and we’re making recommendations that nobody wants to be making,” department Director Sarah Mahin told supervisors.

After the department published a draft of the plan in November, authorities changed the proposal to avoid more than $80 million in additional program cuts. They did that by securing $39 million one-time state grants and implementing about $45 million in other cost-saving measures, officials said.

Dozens of homeless service providers on Tuesday thanked county officials for shrinking the initial $303 million shortfall and urged them to avoid further cuts to services.

“We truly appreciate the progress you've made, but now the remaining shortfall is devastating for Los Angeles and for organizations like ours that are already stretched to the limit,” said Georgia Hawley of Midnight Mission, a homeless shelter in Skid Row.

Garrett Lee, of Department of Mental Health's HOME Team, collaborates with LAHSA’s Homeless Engagement Team during outreach in the targeted COVID-19 testing efforts in the homeless community in 2020.

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Courtesy of Los Angeles County

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What’s driving the deficit?

Several factors are driving the budget deficit projected for the fiscal year that begins in July, according to L.A. County’s homelessness department.

• Shelter bed cost increases: The rates L.A. County pays shelter bed operators went up last year. It will now pay 46% more — an increase of $86 million — to maintain the same 6,000 shelter beds, officials said.
  
• Funds expiring: Several temporary funding sources — totaling about $185 million — have ended or will end in the next fiscal year, officials said. That includes $38 million in federal COVID relief and more than $80 million in state funding.
  
• Consumer spending: Sales tax revenue from Measure A is projected to decrease by $14.5 million in the next fiscal year because consumer spending is down.
  
• Carry-over funds: There are fewer one-time funds available from previous budget years that can be rolled into the coming budget year, officials say.  That number is down by $18 million.
  

Measure A looms large

Last year, L.A. County started collecting revenue through Measure A. The additional 0.5% sales tax approved by voters to address homelessness is expected to generate about $1 billion for L.A. County next budget year. That’s double the revenue generated under the county’s previous homelessness sales tax ordinance.

On Tuesday, service providers said the county cuts don’t make sense to voters who approved Measure A.

“This is not what voters intended when they doubled the tax on themselves to address the homelessness crisis,” said Katie Hill, CEO of Union Station Homeless Services, a Pasadena homelessness nonprofit.

Dozens of homeless services employees lined up to echo that message and demanding officials restore the full budget.

" My request is that you please not approve this plan without filling the gap first,” said Erin Thompson of Inner City Law Center, a nonprofit law firm. “Please find the funds.

Deandra Davis, from the homeless service provider HOPICS, said cutting programs doesn't end up saving the county money in the long run. The costs get pushed elsewhere.

“We shift these costs to jails and hospitals," she said.

Under Measure A, about 60% of revenue has to go toward homeless services. That’s about $625 million for next budget year.

Nearly 36%, or $372 million, must go to the L.A. County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency to support housing development. County homelessness officials said that agency is expected to take on some of the homelessness prevention functions cut from the county’s homeless services budget.

“Measure A has given the overall system more tools to address the homelessness crisis, but fewer of them are held directly by the county,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said Tuesday.

Proposed reductions

L.A. County’s latest homelessness budget proposal includes a $92 million reduction for the county’s Pathway Home program, which moves unhoused Angelenos out of tent encampments by offering them hotel room beds. Pathway Home would be reduced from more than 1,200 beds at 20 project sites to 460 beds at seven sites, officials said.

Fewer beds for the program will mean more tent encampments in areas it serves, officials said.

Solis and fellow Supervisor Holly Mitchell said the program has been crucial for their constituents.

“This continuing attack on Pathway Home is problematic,” Mitchell said at Tuesday’s meeting. “We are clearly heading in a direction where our ability to ultimately resolve homelessness and address encampments and continue to make the progress we've seen in the last couple of years will be severely constrained."

Holly J. Mitchell, an LA County Supervisor who represents the second district.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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The budget plan also includes $127 million in reductions to other programs, including at least 100 frontline worker jobs. Outreach and prevention-related programs would be hit hardest, officials said.

Street outreach-related programs would be reduced by 60% and staffing in those programs would be cut by about half.

Mahin said parts of the county outside the city of Los Angeles will be disproportionately affected by reductions to outreach programs. Her department recommended reductions to certain outreach teams working outside city limits, but not in L.A.

That’s because of legal obligations under a settlement of a major homelessness lawsuit brought against the city and county by The L.A. Alliance for Human Rights.

“There is a requirement due to the L.A. Alliance for the county to maintain a certain level of outreach services in the city of L.A. through next fiscal year,” Mahin told LAist.

Critics of the spending plan urged supervisors to look at other parts of the budget to help save programs still on the chopping block.

Lily Clark of HOPICS told county officials the cuts would hurt her unhoused clients.

"What we can't do is eliminate the programs that prevent homelessness and expect the crisis to improve,” Clark said. “ Every subsidy cut, every outreach program lost, every navigation team dismantled, each one represents a person who will fall through the cracks.”

Next steps

Solis said on Tuesday that she hopes to see changes to outreach spending and other recommendations before approving the plan next month.

“ I know we're gonna have opportunity to try to make some adjustments,” she said.

Mahin told LAist her department has been “turning over couch cushions” looking for other sources of funding to help address the planned cuts and reductions.

“Unless people are bringing other funding solutions to the table,” Mahin said, “My question is: we can make changes, but what would you like to cut instead?”

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said local programs are getting cut because state and federal dollars dried up and costs rose, not because L.A. County cut spending.

“ We cannot invent dollars we no longer receive,” Horvath said. “We're the only level of government that has actually increased our investment. Every other level of government has decreased, and we cannot backfill these gaps.”

The board is expected to vote on the proposed budget Feb. 3.