The Brief

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s falling enrollment and budget challenges are fueling conversations planned for later this year about potential school closures and consolidation.

“Our goal is not simply to have fewer schools; our goal is to have stronger schools, schools that are better resourced, schools that offer more programs for our students,” Superintendent Andrés Chait said during a school board meeting Tuesday. The superintendent shared a similar message in a video sent to families Monday.

LAUSD is spending more money than it brings in and has relied on reserves to fill the gap in recent years. In Tuesday’s meeting, district leaders presented an updated snapshot of LAUSD’s finances that shows steeper enrollment declines and lower state revenue and reserves than projected early this summer.

“That deficit spending is only possible while we have reserves and the very significant challenge that we’re facing as a district is that those reserves are being depleted very quickly,” said Saman Bravo-Karimi, the district's chief financial officer. “They’re eventually going to go negative and we can’t have negative balances as a school district.”

How is enrollment changing? 

Almost 4% fewer students than expected are attending LAUSD schools this academic year compared to last year, according to preliminary data.

Bravo-Karimi said that each 1% drop in enrollment is a loss of about $20 million a year because California funds schools based on how many students show up to class each day.

Fewer students have attended LAUSD schools over the last two decades, in part because of falling birth rates and the region’s high cost of living, but those declines were steeper than anticipated in recent years.

Board member Kelly Gonez said the schools in East San Fernando Valley communities targeted by federal agents have double the enrollment declines of other campuses.

“That increase in enrollment decline last school year was not a coincidence,” Gonez said. “Something changed … that is the presence of a federal administration that is attacking our immigrant communities.”

How is LAUSD approaching school closures?

The district pulled a scheduled vote Monday night on a $960,000 contract with a school closure consultant.

The district planned to work with Alvarez and Marsal to develop a framework for possible school closures, mergers or reconfigurations.

The firm’s priorities, as described on their website, include “maximizing investment value in education” and reshaping how institutions operate.

Alvarez and Marsal are also associated with several controversial decisions, including closing more than a dozen campuses during an overhaul of St. Louis schools in 2003 and faltering when contracted to restructure New York City schools' bus routes in 2007.

Several members of the public and a leader in the district’s teachers union spoke out against the contract and any similar future consultants.

“It’s hard for us to seriously work with this district to fight for more state funding when you squander limited funds you have on contracts with vultures and privatizers like the Alvarez company,” said Julie Van Winkle, United Teachers Los Angeles vice president.

Chait said the decision to remove the contract from consideration was in response to messages from school, community and district stakeholders over the weekend.

“One of the core leadership principles that I’ve always really tried to live by is to listen to folks, especially when they disagree,” Chait said.

Chait said the district needs external support to convene community meetings and compile and analyze data.

“This is arguably the most complex, the most difficult endeavor we will ever take on,” Chait said of school consolidations. “It will reset the footprint of our district for years to come.”

Chait said the district will begin holding community conversations related to school closures in the next few weeks and will share more details during a Sept. 22 meeting.

How did LAUSD’s budget become so strained?

The district’s current $20.6 billion budget projects a $2 billion deficit.

LAUSD approved raises for teachers, principals and support staff earlier this year at the cost of an additional $1 billion this school year. LAUSD, like other districts in the state, also faces increased costs for employee health care, settlements for decades-old sexual assault claims and services for students with disabilities,

L.A. County education officials approved the district’s most recent budget Tuesday on the condition that LAUSD provide additional information about how it is implementing cuts this school year.

However, L.A. County Superintendent Debra Duardo also called out the district's “unsustainable” use of reserves.

“The district’s fiscal status necessitates continued monitoring for both immediate and future corrective actions,” Duardo wrote in a letter to district leadership, referencing the July appointment of a fiscal expert to advise the district.

LAUSD’s board has approved a series of plans to reduce spending and increase revenue. For example, the district eliminated hundreds of jobs, primarily in its administrative offices, earlier this year.

The district’s most recent fiscal stabilization plan includes furlough days for all employees, the elimination of thousands of jobs and cuts to programs that help high-needs schools pay for counselors, tutors and other student supports.

Most of these cuts aren’t scheduled to go into effect until the 2027-28 and 2028-29 school years.

The leader of a congressional panel warned Tuesday he would use “every tool” to get Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to testify after she skipped a hearing that put L.A.’s homeless services system in the hot seat.

It came as multiple audits, reviews and court rulings have found L.A. has failed to ensure proper tracking of large-scale spending on homeless services — particularly through the joint city-county L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA. Much of the money is federal dollars authorized by Congress.

Bass had declined to testify at Tuesday’s hearing, saying she was unavailable and that it would be a “politically motivated” attack. Her public schedule showed she planned to attend a groundbreaking of a shopping and community center in the Pacific Palisades two hours after the hearing was set to start.

Rep. Tim Burchett, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee's DOGE subcommittee, said she won't get off that easily.

Bass "seems intent on evading accountability, but she knows we will not let her off the hook," Burchett said at the hearing. He added that he and the Oversight Committee’s chair would "use every tool at our disposal to secure her appearance if she does not cooperate.”

House committees and subcommittees can issue subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify or provide documents.

Just before the hearing got underway, Bass called it "the latest attack on Los Angeles by the Trump Administration and his allies in Congress.”

"I don't run LAHSA," she said, adding that she was the first mayor to sit on its board and that street homelessness has dropped since she took office. The latest official count for the city showed a 8% year to year jump in street homelessness.

Bass stepped off LAHSA’s governing commission last week, after LAist reported she had missed most of its meetings since she appointed herself to it in 2023. The mayor cited “time and all” as her reason for stepping down. She continues to appoint — and has the power to remove — half the commission’s members, including its current chair.

What happened at the hearing

Much of the hour-and-a-half hearing focused on Republican members’ criticism that Democrat-led cities distribute drug paraphernalia and don’t require unhoused people with addictions to get treatment as a condition of living in publicly funded housing.

Some proposals raised Tuesday would change how money reaches Los Angeles.

Burchett said he will introduce the Recovery First Housing Act, to require federally funded housing to offer substance abuse treatment. He has also introduced a bill restricting federal housing dollars to only support U.S. citizens.

LA's fights on a national stage

Burchett noted LAHSA’s audit committee chair, Justin Szlasa — who was proactive in rooting out wasteful spending — was demoted by Stephanie Graves, a Bass appointee who has declined to give her reason for doing so. The move was first reported by LAist.

Burchett also made claims that don’t hold up. He said 50,000 people are homeless in the city with "another 75,000" in the surrounding county. The latest official count found a total of 73,000 unhoused people across L.A. County — a figure that includes the city.

Burchett also said, “ LAHSA recently doled out funds to an L.A.-area nonprofit whose CEO had just been indicted for fraud.” LAist recently investigated LAHSA’s awarding of funds to that nonprofit, Abundant Blessings, and found no indication that LAHSA awarded it any funds after the fraud indictment. However, the review did find that long before the indictment, LAHSA kept awarding millions in contracts to the group even after it was flagged internally as high-risk for failing to do its job.

Burchett, however, was correct in saying “a court-ordered independent assessment of LAHSA's finances found alarming financial control weaknesses that leave the door open to rampant fraud.”

On Tuesday, street safety advocates and families of victims of vehicle collisions demanded that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declare a state of emergency on traffic violence in the city.

Sandra Sanchez Loulakis’s son died last year after she said he was hit by a negligent driver.

“I’ve been struggling just to survive daily,” she said at the news conference organized by traffic safety nonprofit Streets are for Everyone. “This is what happens to a parent when they lose a child.”

The city has seen 8% more fatal traffic collisions this year than during the same period last year, according to LAPD data from the end of August.

Advocates said an emergency declaration would better coordinate resources to respond to traffic fatalities, which have exceeded the rate of homicides for the last three years.

“ This is not a matter of we don't know what to do,” Damian Kevitt, who leads Streets are for Everyone, said Tuesday. “This is a matter of we know exactly what to do. We’re just not making this a priority as a city.”

Kevitt said more than 1,250 people signed an open letter delivered to the mayor and L.A. City Council. One of the demands listed in the letter is for the city to restore transportation department staff.

Earlier this year, the city gave up $100 million in state grants to make streets safer because it did not have the personnel to complete the projects in compliance with state-mandated deadlines.

Draft executive directive on Vision Zero

It appears there had been momentum from the mayor’s office earlier this year to issue an executive directive recommitting the city to its Vision Zero goals of reducing traffic fatalities to zero.

According to emails from May shared with LAist, the mayor’s senior director of transportation told an activist that a draft executive directive was “under review” and expected to be released “within the next three weeks.”

The email was sent to Jonathan Hale, who organizes community members to paint crosswalks where there have been pedestrian-involved collisions.

The executive directive has yet to be released.

LAist submitted a public records request for drafts of the executive directive, but on Sept. 14, the mayor’s office responded saying it could not disclose any records.

“[The records] include drafts and/or deliberative process for which the public interest served in nondisclosure clearly outweighs the public interest served by the disclosure,” the office said.

The mayor’s office has not responded to requests for comment about the draft executive directive.

A new report commissioned by Olympics organizers estimates that the 2028 Games will generate at least $20 billion in economic output across Greater Los Angeles.

The analysis, prepared for LA28 by the nonprofit Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation’s Institute for Applied Economics, looked at the economic effects of L.A. hosting the Olympics and Paralympics. It includes organizing committee spending, capital investments, publicly funded transportation and security investments, and tourism. 

In total, the report projects that new economic activity across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties could total somewhere between $20.5 billion and $25.4 billion and add around 126,000 and 152,000 jobs to the economy.

A second less conservative methodology employed by the researchers estimates the overall economic output could be even higher, between $35.4 and $40.6 billion and up to 224,000 new jobs.

“ Together, they provide a responsible range, not an exaggerated promise,” Stephen Cheung, CEO of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, said at a news conference announcing the report on Tuesday. “ If we work together with intention, the Games can leave Los Angeles with more than unforgettable memories. They can leave us with stronger businesses, greater opportunities, and a more connected regional economy.”

Despite the 2028 Games being advertised as a "no-build" Olympics, the biggest chunk of spending laid out in the report is on capital projects, including the $2.6 billion L.A. Convention Center renovation, billions in LAX improvements, major transit projects like Metro ExpressLanes on the 105 Freeway, and venue renovations, such as upgrades to Rose Bowl Stadium.

The report also estimates that around $5.7 billion of LA28’s spending will be in the five county region. LA28 has a $7.1 billion budget and has pledged to keep 75% of its spending in the Greater L.A. area, and put 25% toward small businesses.

“ That economic impact is going to be felt far and wide and across Los Angeles, as well as the Southern California region,” LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover said Tuesday.

The report is the second economic analysis forecasting the effects of the 2028 Games to come out this month. A separate report submitted to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in early September estimated that the Games would produce more than $13 billion in direct spending and a total economic output of $19.2 billion in Los Angeles County alone.

The same report also laid out the potential uneven distribution of economic benefits to the region, including limited benefits for Olympic venue sites that are not tourist destinations and parts of Los Angeles being excluded from the Games altogether.

HR&A Advisors, the consultant group that put the report together, identified Carson, Pomona, the City of Industry and Exposition Park as locations that are hosting Olympic events, but that could end up being “passthrough areas.”

“Although these areas may be active during the day, they may struggle to capture spending from visitors who pass through but do not spend money outside the venue,” the report states.

The county report also questioned what economic benefits will flow to parts of L.A. County that will be disconnected from Olympic and Paralympic activities, like Antelope Valley and Southeast Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, the analysis found that L.A.’s typical tourist destinations — including downtown L.A., Old Town Pasadena, downtown Long Beach and the Venice Boardwalk — can expect to be active areas for economic activity during summer 2028.