"Disappointingly, it seems that Superintendent Carvalho has already decided to double down on explanations not grounded in fact."
- Jeff Chemerinsky, Kendal Brill & Kelly LLP
My time on the high school football field was spent with a snare drum strapped around my chest. As a student who was easily distracted in the academic classroom and struggled to apply myself, band class was a welcomed reprieve during the day. Playing the drums was my niche, it was how I stood out. I carried my drumsticks around the way football players wore their varsity jackets.
During my school years, I was fortunate that the district I attended recognized the importance of arts education. In elementary school, there were classrooms devoted to art and music staffed by full-time teachers. There was also an orchestra teacher. My middle school had two full-time band teachers, and an art class was included in the curriculum. High school offered a full range of band and choir classes in addition to the chance to participate in the jazz band and marching band in after-school programs.
Even back then, it was clear that future students would not have these same opportunities. The program that allowed interested sixth-grade students to participate in a stage production disappeared while I was in school, a victim of budget cuts as the baby boom turned into a bust. During my time in high school, there were constant rumors that there were plans to reduce the number of band teachers.
This reduction in the availability of Arts Education was part of a nationwide trend that accelerated as the second Bush administration and then Obama's placed an increasing focus on test scores. Ignoring evidence that music and art help to increase academic performance, teachers were forced to spend more time teaching to standardized tests. Arts funding was seen as extravagant in a system that values data over a total educational experience.
When I visited my old elementary school in 2015, the band room did not even exist anymore. I grieved for the school's students who no longer had the opportunity to find the joy of mastering an instrument.
California voters understood the magnitude of this loss when 64.4% of voters opted to approve PROP 28 in 2022. This measure provided an additional source of funding for arts and music education for K-12 public schools with rules to ensure that districts used this money to supplement, not supplant, existing funding. This included a requirement that "schools with 500 or more students to use 80% of the funding for employing teachers and 20% to training and materials".
Complaints grew as parents in Los Angeles noticed that their children were not seeing improved access to art and music funding as the PROP 28 money started to flow into the district. As the author of the proposition, Austin Beutner was well acquainted with the rules it set in place and agreed that the LAUSD was not following the spirit or the letter of the law. After months of trying to get the District to do the right thing, he joined parents, students, and teachers in filing suit against the District and current Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho.
The suit could have served as a wake-up call to LAUSD's leadership that their actions were being watched, but they did not use it as an opportunity to ensuring PROP 28 money was being spent properly. Carvalho saw the suit as a public relations problem and instead of fixing the compliance issues, he tried to spin the narrative. As noted by the plaintiffs' lawyer, Jeff Chemerinsky, he "has already decided to double down on explanations not grounded in fact".
To resolve this issue, the plaintiffs are demanding that the LAUSD:
- Publicly acknowledge that it mis-spent PROP 28 funds in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years.
- Fully restore misspent and misallocated PROP 28 funding to schools.
- Agree to be fully transparent about how PROP 28 funding is used in future years.
In a letter to the LAUSD's General Counsel, Chemerinsky reminds the District that, if it is found that the funds were not used according to the terms of the proposition, they will have to return the money to the state. Combined with possible penalties for "violating the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino students", the District could be facing a hit to its budget of over $100 million.
This is not a slip-and-fall lawsuit designed to squeeze scarce education funding from our children's classrooms. Instead, it is litigation designed to improve the education experience of our students.
The suit would not have been brought if Carvahlo and the District had engaged with the community instead of ignoring their concerns. As Chermerinsky notes, "families, labor partners, and concerned citizens spent months seeking answers. Regrettably, LAUSD refused to meaningfully respond."
The Board must make it clear to Carvahlo that an increasingly detached bureaucracy can no longer ignore their constituents' concerns. A good place to start would be by settling this lawsuit.
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