Care About Public Education?
We Must ACT NOW
Fund
Our Schools
LAUSD is currently not giving any proposals to address funding issues. California is the richest state in the nation, yet ranks 43 out of 50 among the states in per-pupil funding. LAUSD must fight at the local, state, and national level to increase funding to $20,000 per student by the year 2020.
Push for LAUSD to use its substantial political weight, rather than only its rhetoric, in the fight in Sacramento to increase per-pupil spending, to lift California out of its atrocious 43rd spot among the 50 states in school funding.
Charter School
Oversight
An unchecked expansion of the charter industry drains millions away from our neighborhood schools. LAUSD must regulate charter industry growth and charter school co-locations on neighborhood school campuses.
Place commonsense regulation on charter growth and reasonable accountabilities on charters. If the more than 280% growth of corporate charters in the last 10 years is duplicated in the next 10 years, we will face massive cuts to public district schools, layoffs, school closures, and cuts to healthcare.
Reduce
Class Size
LAUSD must stop increasing class sizes without bargaining or talking to parents. Students have a better chance to succeed with smaller classes.
Remove Section 1.5 from the class-size article so that the district can no longer unilaterally break through class-size caps and averages. Making this change would improve student learning conditions, demand more classroom space for district schools thereby cutting against charter co-location, and place a high floor on the number of educators needed, therefore cutting against Beutner’s plan for layoffs.
Invest in
Community Schools
LAUSD is currently not giving any proposals to fund Community Schools. They must invest in proven strategies that uplift neighborhood schools. Let’s invest in the Community Schools model, with increased parent engagement, broadened curriculum, and wrap-around services.
Invest in a vision for our public district schools—the Community Schools model—which supports school communities to develop assets/needs assessments and strategic plans to build wrap-around services, broadened curriculum, deep and systematic parent engagement, restorative practices, and collaborative leadership.
Support Students
and Families
LAUSD ignores real-life conditions that impact our students. Supporting immigrant rights, ending racial profiling in searches, and increasing green space can create a better learning environment for all students.
Increase parent and educator decision making by giving local school leadership councils control over how funds are used at schools.
Improve
School Safety
LAUSD is denying our students access to the supports they need to succeed. LAUSD should fund staffing and school safety plans so that our students have real access to counselors, school psychologists, and nurses.
Improve school safety through hiring additional nurses, counselors, librarians, and other health and human services professionals.
Less Testing
and More Teaching
LAUSD is currently not giving any proposals to address overtesting. Unnecessary standardized testing reduces critical instructional time. LAUSD must increase educator discretion in testing.
Give educators discretion over what non-federal- and non-state-mandated standardized tests to use in our classrooms, thereby protecting instructional time and educator professionalism, while creating space for arts, music, ethnic studies, and more.

But There Is Money
- Beutner says unregulated charter school growth is a “distracting shiny ball” yet it drains $600 million annually from our public schools
- LAUSD sits on over $1.8 billion in unrestricted reserves.
- California is the 5th largest economy in the world