Critics say LAUSD is too slow in spending funds aimed at Black students

In summer 2020 the LAUSD Board of Education made the historic decision to slash the school police budget by 35% and redirect funding to support Black students, but now the same advocates that fought for that change are saying schools are spending this money too slowly.

The Police Free LAUSD Coalition — made up of parents, students, teacher union leaders and community groups — held a press conference outside LAUSD Headquarters on Tuesday, March 7 to discuss its report on the district’s implementation of the Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP).

They based their report on an analysis of school-level spending reports and a survey of about 2,300 students at more than 100 schools. The district declined to comment on its findings.

The report says 87% percent of Black students feel like they are benefitting from BSAP, but that a significant amount of the roughly $117 million in collective funding still remains unspent. The program was rolled out in September 2021.

BSAP’s funding was intended to boost mental health resources, create partnerships with community-based nonprofits and provide school climate coaches to help address racial issues and conflict on campuses.

Nearly 40% of the funds allocated for Black students went unspent in the first year of BSAP, the report states. And so far in the 2022 to 2023 school year the 53 schools in Group 1 BSAP — which comprise one-third of the district’s Black students and received the greatest proportion of funding — have not spent or committed 57% of the funds meant for partnerships with community-based organizations.

The coalition is asking that existing funds be spent, and that more money be permanently allocated for BSAP. Meanwhile, the group continues to call for defunding the school police, which has an annual department budget of about $50 million.

“The data from our survey shows that BSAP is a transformative program that is providing crucial resources to Black students that we’ve never received before,” said Jailynn Butler Thomas, an 11th grade student at Dorsey High School in Crenshaw and a leader in the advocacy group Students Deserve. “But more importantly, the program is vastly underfunded and needs to be expanded.”

But not everyone representing students is onboard with the coalition’s demands.

Nuestra Voz/Our Voice, a group of Latino LAUSD parents, say that their children don’t feel safe without police on campus.

“This coalition doesn’t speak to the needs of all families,” said Evelyn Aleman, founder of Our Voice. “We are concerned that in seeking to draw further funding from the school district by calling to defund the school police, the coalition will do so at the expense of the wellbeing and safety of all students in L.A. Unified.”

Our Voice parents also want the district to pay more attention to the needs and voices of Latino students, who make up 74% of LAUSD’s student body and are a high-need population with many English language learners. In comparison, Black students comprise about 8% of the student population.

Aleman added that while Our Voice is primarily composed of Latino immigrant parents, the organization seeks to advocate for the well-being and advancement of all students. They believe that a school police presence is one of the factors that will lead to safe schools.

United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing district teachers, stands squarely behind the demands of Police Free LAUSD Coalition and is including them in ongoing contract negotiations with the district.

UTLA, and its sometimes polarizing president Cecily Myart-Cruz, have long urged elimination of school police.

UTLA Secondary Vice President Julie Van Winkle, at Tuesday’s press conference, said, “We know that the district does not continue to fund and support programs that they don’t have an obligation to fund and support, so that’s why we the teachers are demanding that the Black Student Achievement Plan is codified in our contract.”

The recently elected Van Winkle added, “Students are telling us right now what they need in the survey results.  They need more services, they need more funding for BSAP.”

The school board voted to commit an initial $36.5 million to BSAP, including $25 million from the police budget cuts, in February 2021. In June 2021 the board voted to direct an additional $56.7 million into programs supporting Black students. Then in June 2022 the school board voted to invest a further $24 million to BSAP.

The report found that the vast majority of Black students surveyed support BSAP, but only about half of them have participated in BSAP-related programs such as counseling, restorative justice and community partner programming. And about half of surveyed Black students said their school does not have enough mental health resources.

The district has made it a priority to expand mental health services but has struggled to hire enough psychologists and psychiatric social workers.

“LAUSD is still not providing enough mental health resources and schools are still using police to criminalize and abuse students in response to regular adolescent behavior, like fights, or behavior that needs mental health support,” said Butler Thomas, the 11th grader at Dorsey High School.

Mental health workers are part of what the coalition hopes could one day replace the school police force. They are also calling for more peer mediation services, addiction counseling, overdose prevention education, violence de-escalation programs, and safe “passage way” programs aimed at assuring that routes to school are safe.

These initiatives fall under the umbrella of BSAP, but the report emphasized that implementation is a challenge.

The report states that none of the $15 million dedicated to community based safety pilot programs were spent in the 2021 to 2022 school year. And so far in the 2022 to 2023 school year the Group 1 BSAP schools have only spent or committed 18% of their budgets for pilot programs.

The coalition is imploring LAUSD to ensure that dollars in annual budgets don’t expire at the end of the school year.

“Just because the system and infrastructure hasn’t been built out, you don’t penalize the schools by taking that money back,” said Christian Flag, member of LAUSD’s BSAP Steering Committee, at the press conference. “You must carry over all unspent dollars into the next year until you fully and effectively implement the program.”

Decisions about future funding of BSAP and the school police force will be made this summer when the Board of Education passes its budget for the 2023 to 2024 school year.