Former Superintendent Austin Beutner and four parents filed a lawsuit on February 10 alleging Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) violated state law by misusing taxpayer money meant for arts and music education.
The lawsuit names both the district and current Superintendent Alberto Carvalho as defendants. United Teachers Los Angeles, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99 and Teamsters Local 572 have endorsed the litigation and are helping pay for the lawsuit, according to EdSource.
The suit alleges LAUSD has not been honest with the state about how it is using Proposition 28 funding. Voters approved Proposition 28 in November 2022 to fund arts and music education programs in schools. The proposition requires 1% of funding provided annually for K-12 education to be spent on establishing or supporting arts instruction. Beutner was one of its authors.
Under the proposition, LAUSD was allocated $77 million for arts education in the 2023-24 school year. However, the lawsuit lists 37 elementary schools that either saw no new investment in arts education or decreased funding despite the district’s increased budget.
“LAUSD is denying our children and their classmates the expanded arts and music education in every school that Prop. 28 provided,’’ the families filing the suit said in a joint statement.
On August 15, Carvalho released a memo to the board that showed Proposition 28 money was used to pay the salaries of existing art teachers. The lawsuit alleges that LAUSD “eliminated existing funding sources for existing art teachers and replaced those funds with Proposition 28 funds, thereby violating the requirement that the funds supplement rather than supplant existing sources.”
“We have worked to clarify any misunderstandings regarding Prop. 28 and continue to follow the state’s implementation guidance to ensure full compliance with its requirements,” a LAUSD spokesperson wrote in a statement to Annenberg Media on February 12.
The suit further alleges that the district has “made no meaningful effort to recruit or hire new art teachers as required by the law.”
Nicolle Fefferman, an LAUSD parent and high school history teacher, said that she saw parents notice the lack of arts education, and subsequently reach out to board members and the California Department of Education.
“It started about a year ago during the 2023-24 school year,” Fefferman said. “Some members from [Parents Supporting Teachers] noticed their children were not receiving any additional art instruction.”
Proposition 28 requires every school site principal or program director to develop an expenditure plan for arts funds, and local education agencies to annually certify that the funds supplement existing arts programs. Fefferman said, in reality, principals were told very little information and told simply the money was “funding for the arts.”
“The people in charge of the budget division have their marching orders to penny pinch as much as possible,” Fefferman said. “The reality is that this is public funding that is going to a public good. We’re not running a company like Target or Amazon.”
Fefferman also alleged that the district ignored older students at middle and high schools when allocating the money.
In the wake of the lawsuit, plaintiff Vicky Martinez, parent of three and member of Parents Supporting Teachers, said she hopes that the money LAUSD received from Proposition 28 is paid back so that it can be directed toward giving students art education, as originally intended.
“They stole money from the kids, and at the helm of it is our Carvalho, the superintendent, and I would like to see him resign,” Martinez said. “Because if he’s willing to steal from the kids…I don’t know what he’s doing here.”