LAUSD fiscal – The Los Angeles Board of Education approved a fiscal stabilization plan that would cut thousands of jobs over three years, while reversing large reductions to the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan after pressure from advocates. Board action also passed
For the Los Angeles Unified community, Tuesday’s school board meeting brought a familiar kind of dread: the district’s next financial steps are being built around layoffs, furloughs, and cuts that won’t start fully for more than a year.
But it also brought an immediate fight over what the district refuses to fully give up. Under pressure from community and student advocates. the Los Angeles Board of Education reversed major proposed reductions to the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan. even as it approved a broader fiscal stabilization plan designed to keep the district solvent.
The original fiscal blueprint would have cut $100 million out of the program’s $125 million in annual spending. That reduction was set to take effect July 1, 2027. Instead, board members approved two amendments that restored funding.
Board member Kelly Gonez’s amendment, proposed and approved unanimously, put back $50 million—halving next year’s cut to $50 million. That amendment also directed district staff to present a plan in August to restore an additional $25 million.
Then Board member Karla Griego proposed drawing down a retiree health benefit trust fund for another $175 million. an amount intended to close the rest of the gap across the three years of the financial plan. Griego’s amendment passed by a 5-2 vote, as did the revised financial plan. The two dissenting votes each time were cast by Nick Melvoin and Tanya Ortiz Franklin.
Even after the vote, the picture for the Black Student Achievement Plan was difficult to confirm. District communications staff on Tuesday night were unable to confirm whether all the funding had been restored, and at least one board member, when contacted, believed the restoration was complete.
The board’s approvals came the same day it approved major labor agreements that narrowly averted a strike in April. Those deals will add more than $1 billion a year to district costs, covering higher salaries, maintaining health benefits for workers, and expanding some services for students.
Acting Superintendent Andres Chait said adoption of a “fiscal stabilization plan” is painful but necessary. He argued that even though cuts were proposed. board approval of the labor contracts provides important supports for employees and ultimately for students. As additional funding becomes available—from the state or through local savings in other areas—Chait said the cuts would be adjusted.
“These are difficult conversations, because every decision affects people,” Chait said. “The reality is that we must do both: address the district’s fiscal challenges and continue investing in the people and services that directly support students.”
That push-and-pull is rooted in a requirement that has tightened the district’s choices. California law requires school districts to operate within their financial means. and the Los Angeles County education office enforces the law by requiring districts to be solvent three years into the future. Under the budgeting rules. Los Angeles Unified is not meeting the mark and must show how it will make cuts to stay out of the red in a “fiscal stabilization plan.”.
Separate from the stabilization plan, the district must approve its annual budget, which will incorporate the approved cuts. A vote on the full budget is scheduled for next week.
Before the board’s vote, district projections painted a harsh picture: without the cuts, Los Angeles Unified projected a deficit of $1.3 billion at the end of next year and $3.6 billion at the end of the following year.
Because the vast majority of spending goes to salaries and benefits, extensive cuts would almost certainly include staff reductions and layoffs. In the original estimate, the plan would eliminate 6,000 jobs by the end of the three-year period. The district has about 83,000 employees.
The plan also includes seven unpaid furlough days over the three-year period, which would have to be negotiated with the union. Union leaders said Tuesday they would oppose the furlough days.
To eliminate the future deficit, the district focused on discretionary spending.
Where the board faced its sharpest resistance was in areas tied to jobs and public safety staffing. Union leaders opposed cuts that would cost jobs and argued the district should restrict outside contracting and limit senior executive pay.
Board member Kelly Gonez proposed alternate cuts that included $20 million more in central office positions—positions that she said had already been cut significantly; a cut in the school police budget of $3.5 million for next year in 2026-27 and $7 million for the year after.
Gil Gamez, a school police union leader, said the first year’s reduction would likely be managed by closing vacancies and laying off three officers. In the second year, he said the impact would be laying off 17 to 35 officers, depending upon how the language of the board action is interpreted.
He said officers in the field already have been reduced to about 70 for the district’s 900 or schools and 710 square miles. He also pointed to another source of strong opposition: the proposed elimination of $500 million given to schools through the Student Equity Needs Index.
SENI is a formula that uses academic. health and community indicators—such as chronic absenteeism. English learner rates and neighborhood conditions—to rank schools according to need. Gamez and other opponents said the SENI cuts translate to 4. 500 lost jobs in services such as counseling. mental health support and academic help.
Some question how fixed the numbers really are. The state’s budgeting rules don’t allow the district to include unconfirmed future revenues. The district noted that for the 2026-27 school year it will receive a $328 million discretionary block grant. and that while similar funding has been coming in recent years. it’s not guaranteed.
That means the $328 million amount can’t be scored as a funding source in the second and third years of the three-year plan. The district also pointed out it does not have a full accounting for an explosion of state tax revenue tied to the increasing wealth of the state’s richest residents and the artificial intelligence boom.
Eventually. the state will have to increase school funding because of state law that sets aside a certain percentage of tax revenue for schools. but that additional money also is not yet scored in the budget calculations. The district said that if the state economy maintains its current path, schools would receive far more funding. If the state economy takes a hit—an economic or stock market crash—the budget projections could be even worse than what is planned through the fiscal stabilization plan.
The broader pressure, officials said, includes ongoing declining enrollment. Because school funding is linked to enrollment, declining enrollment would put the district under pressure over time to reduce the number of employees and close schools.
Tuesday’s vote was not the end of the decisions. The lion’s share of the cuts begin to take effect on July 1, 2027, leaving a year to develop alternative solutions and potentially benefit from increasing state aid if economic trends stay stable.
Still, reductions of this scale cannot be resolved without major changes in key areas. The school board was set to approve the fiscal stabilization plan this week as a prelude to approving the budget scheduled for next week, with a deadline of acting before the end of June.
For next year, the entire project spending plan totals $20.6 billion—up from $18.8 billion in the current year. The district is spending more than the confirmed revenue to date, which stands at $18.6 billion.
LAUSD Los Angeles Board of Education fiscal stabilization plan layoffs furloughs Black Student Achievement Plan Kelly Gonez Karla Griego Nick Melvoin Tanya Ortiz Franklin labor agreements Andres Chait Student Equity Needs Index SENI