LAUSD Loses Appeal Over Its Spending Of $450 Million In State Funds Intended For High-Need Students
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — The Los Angeles Unified School District may soon have to redirect how it spends hundreds of millions of dollars set aside by the state to directly benefit high-need students including English learners, foster youth and low-income students, according to a ruling by the California Department of Education.
The school district in June had appealed the state's determination that LAUSD was not following the terms of a new state funding plan meant to direct more money to students who are costly and difficult to teach, the Los Angeles Times reported. On Friday, state education officials upheld that decision, saying LAUSD must revise its calculation of how it accounted for $450 million in spending.
The Community Coalition of South Los Angeles and other groups have asserted that the nation's second-largest school system was using the $450 million for its general program for all students or to cover other costs, including offsetting an ongoing budget crisis.
"You need to show that the funding you are providing was principally directed toward those students," said Victor Leung, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which was involved in the litigation. "It can't just be some sort of blanket program that impacted a lot of those students, which is essentially what LAUSD's interpretation was, which was rejected."
The state's decision would also preclude LAUSD from spending the $450 million on "special education," since not all students included in special education programs fall into the three categories of students for which the money was earmarked, according to the LA School Report.
The state gave the district until the 2017-18 school year to reallocate or justify the disputed expenses, according to The Times.
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