“They’re overstaffed significantly,” said Michel Fine, CEO of California’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team of the Los Angeles school district. “Our argument with them would be, ‘you should have started … a few years ago. Then attrition would have just taken care of the problem. Every time someone leaves, you shouldn’t be going out and replacing them. You should think through that.’ ”

After authorizing layoffs for 3,200 non-teaching employees in February — including administrators and central office workers — just 657 were actually let go. And the $150 million savings from those cuts didn’t make much of a dent in overall spending. 

By delaying deep cuts, the district now faces even more job reductions. Its solvency plan includes a total 5,000 layoffs between 2027 and 2029 along with furlough days and changes to employee health benefit options, all of which must be negotiated with the district’s powerful labor unions. It’s unclear which employees could be laid off in the future.

Fine’s agency will help determine whether the nation’s second largest school district can independently carry out deep budget cuts, or face bankruptcy, county takeover or both.

In a seven-page July , the Los Angeles County Office of Education appointed a fiscal expert to work with the district and scolded officials for signing $1.2 billion in collective bargaining agreements earlier this year and drawing down from a fund for retiree health benefits, against the advice of its own fiscal advisor.

“The Board’s decision to override its own staff’s fiscal advice raises serious concern about the District’s willingness and ability to execute its financial stabilization plan with fidelity,” the county wrote. 

Fine said he is optimistic that the district will be able to “fix this problem and do it promptly,” but not without significant staff cuts.

LAUSD school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin, who represents Watts and parts of South Los Angeles, said the board should never have used one-time pandemic relief money to hire 6,000 new employees in 2021. Those funds expired in 2024.

But just two years after those hires the district issued a hiring freeze. In 2023, then-Superintendent Alerto Carvalho said that were also on the table to make up for lapsed relief funds.

“We ballooned our staffing when we had the resources to do so and we didn’t take the parallel process to close all of those positions,” said Franklin, a former middle school teacher who was laid off during 2010 budget cuts. 

Now the number of proposed layoffs has grown. In June the board approved a plan to issue 5,000 pink slips in 2027 and 2028, Franklin said. “It will be a challenge but necessary for us to actually issue all of those layoffs.”

Staffing cuts will go a long way to correct the budget problems, Fine said. The district has a “robust” attrition rate, he said. With focused reductions the district should be able to “solve the problem and move on.”

“The board has to have the will to do it,” he said.

Furlough days proposed in the district’s must be implemented by the Thanksgiving break in late November, according to the county’s letter, and layoffs must be formalized by January and in March. If fully executed, the plan would reduce spending by $3.6 billion.

The plan also includes school closures or reconfigurations for the 2027 and 2028 school years. Compared to cutting staff, which makes up 90% of the district’s budget, the savings from consolidating campuses is minimal — about $60 million over two years — but as the the district simply doesn’t need as many facilities, Franklin said.

The district serves more than 370,000 students from seven different cities across Los Angeles County — about half as many as were enrolled in 2018. The greater Los Angeles area is than other areas of California. Overall, state enrollment dropped 8% between 2015 and 2025, but the decrease in Los Angeles was more than 17%. 

“It’s a small piece of the bigger picture,” she said, “but in my perspective, it is one that we need to take on because our physical campuses are too vast for the number of students.”

School consolidations could take several forms, she said. The Diego Rivera Learning Complex in South Los Angeles, for instance, currently houses four small high schools with a total enrollment of about 2,000 students, each with its own administrative staff. Complexes like this one, she said, could be consolidated under one administration while other staff are laid off.

Schools with low enrollments could also be combined, Franklin said. In her district a number of elementary schools have less than 200 students — including Avalon Gardens, with 152 students, and Leapwood Elementary, with 179 — and others that hover around 200.

“Instead of having three or four elementary schools, maybe we figure out as a community how to bring those campuses together,” she said.

Another possibility would be to combine grades, either elementary and middle or middle and high school. This model, Franklin said, has the benefit of potentially staunching the flow of sixth graders who are leaving the district by building connections between middle school and other grades.

But none of these changes will be easy, she said, and all will require comprehensive coordination with the community.

“Historically we haven’t done a good job of doing school closures or consolidations,” said Franklin. “It’ll come down to the eleventh hour and there is an outcry of emotions. I don’t want to get to that state this year.” 

Los Angeles Unified School District leaders say they are confident they can persuade county officials that the district can avoid a projected cash shortfall and remain under local control, and are preparing for budget cuts, possible furloughs and school consolidation.  

A July 2  from the Los Angeles County Office of Education found that LAUSD met the criteria for a “Lack of Going Concern,” meaning the district’s financial plan does not show it can meet its future cash obligations. County officials project Los Angeles Unified will face a $231 million cash shortfall in 2027. 

The finding, which also comes after the district failed to make sufficient cuts during the 2025-26 budget, triggered a 45-day period for LAUSD to revise its current fiscal plan for the coming school year. The county has appointed an expert to work with the district during that process. If Los Angeles Unified does not make adequate changes, a county advisor would be appointed, giving the county authority to overrule district decisions. 

Like many California districts, LAUSD’s financial challenges stem from a combination of declining enrollment, the expiration of Covid relief funding and rising operative costs. Enrollment fell 3% during the 2025-26 school year in Los Angeles, reducing state funding tied to student attendance. Still, the amount LAUSD has received from the state has increased over the past three years. 

The county’s letter also cites a series of union contracts reached this spring that will cost the district more than $2.5 billion over the term of the contracts. Union leaders have disputed the severity of the district’s financial crisis. 

Superintendent Andrés Chait  a press conference last week that the county office of education wants the district to prove it can implement its proposed savings, including possible furloughs, and explain its alternative cost-cutting options. 

“I just think it’s really important for board members to take very seriously the process that this state has in place to ensure that every district is fiscally solvent,” said Yolie Flores, president and CEO of Families in Schools, a nonprofit focused on student success. A former LAUSD board vice president, Flores was also appointed to the district’s new revenue task force. 

District officials and independent experts say LAUSD’s fiscal challenges have been building for years and are not unexpected. They’ve also warned that the district will likely need to make difficult spending cuts to restore its long-term financial stability, and that additional state funding alone is unlikely to solve its structural budget problems. 

“Now we’re in a situation where this constriction is still happening, but now the artificial floor is gone,” said Stephen Aguilar, a professor of education at the University of Southern California. “So now, we’re falling through to the basement, and we’re sort of in this emergency period.” 

Painful cuts are expected  

The district’s most difficult decisions are expected to come over the next several months. Board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin said schools will receive their budget allocations for the 2027-28 academic year this fall, and the board will discuss workforce reductions needed to balance the budget.  

She also said that the district must carefully manage workforce reductions so high-needs schools aren’t disproportionately affected by staff turnover. 

The board will also need to weigh other cost-saving measures, including furlough days — a prospect Ortiz Franklin acknowledged could feel like a “slap in the face for our labor unions” — and possible changes to employee health benefit contributions.  

Ortiz Franklin also questioned whether the district could successfully save $200 million by reassessing contracts with outside vendors, as some of the items being procured cannot be made in-house. 

Looking beyond the immediate budget crisis, she said school consolidation is likely unavoidable as enrollment continues to decline, with those conversations expected to begin this fall. 

The board will meet Aug. 11 in a likely closed session meeting to start discussing its fiscal recovery plan. 

“The superintendent is clear that these are ambitious strategies, and that the board needs to not only be aware of them but also weigh in, given that we are elected to represent the voices of our communities,” Ortiz Franklin said. 

“And we want to do our best to make sure we continue to do that, and don’t have a fiscal advisor appointed, so that we lose the ability to make decisions on behalf of our community who elected us.”

LAUSD’s financial situation 

Education finance experts say the findings of the county office of education are serious, but not unusual. Districts across California have faced similar fiscal challenges, and many have restored their financial footing after county intervention. 

“Unfortunately,” Flores said, “it takes a threat like what L.A. Unified is now experiencing for them to make the decisions that they should be making to show that they are fiscally responsible as a board and as management.” 

The board received a similar letter when Flores was on LAUSD’s school board during the height of the Great Recession.

“I just got here, and that’s all we were doing is cutting, cutting, cutting,” she said. “Feeling the impact of what that would mean for our families and for children. … It was a long year.” 

Michael Fine, the CEO of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, said the debate over whether union contracts pushed the district into its present predicament misses the larger issue. The concern, he said, is whether the board approved contracts without clearly explaining how it would pay for them. 

He said that the district should have been more transparent. In July, the parent group Oleada, Inc.,  findings from a public records request revealing a series of written warnings from LACOE to Los Angeles Unified dating back to April, months before the school board approved its fiscal stabilization plan.

“It’s when the board says, ‘I’m going to approve these contracts, even though I don’t know how I’m going to pay the bill,’ that’s where the problem is,” Fine said. “It’s not with the negotiations themselves. It’s not with the deal that was made.” 

Despite his criticism, Fine said he does not believe LAUSD is beyond recovery.  

“I’m normally the one worrying. I’m normally the one on behalf of all district staff all night figuring out or thinking through ‘Uh-oh, do we have a district in trouble?’ ” Fine said. “I’m not feeling that for L.A. right now because I truly believe this is well within their ability to address.” 

California unlikely to come to the rescue

For months, LAUSD and its labor unions have lobbied lawmakers in Sacramento for additional education funding. But education experts say new state funding, while helpful, is unlikely to solve the district’s underlying fiscal problems.  

Much of that advocacy — including from other districts — has focused on the $3.9 billion of Proposition 98 funds that the state has withheld, Fine said. 

Even if the state releases those funds, Fine said, LAUSD’s share is unlikely to make up for the shortfalls. And because the funding may come with restrictions, the money may not come in the form LAUSD needs. 

“We should be able to invest in our schools. However, that always has to come with the understanding that we can’t artificially raise the floor again,” Aguilar said. 

“Because then, what you’re essentially doing is you’re kicking the can down the road, and I think this time it won’t even travel as far if you kick it.”

This story was originally published by EdSource.  for their daily newsletter.

California education officials are tasked with a difficult mission over the next few months — finding the best way to figure out which 4-year-olds need extra help learning English.

What makes this a challenge is that children at this age are still developing language skills, and they aren’t used to tests. In past assessments, children would sometimes cry and put their heads down on the desk.

When children enroll for the first time in California’s TK-12 schools, families must fill out a survey about the languages they speak at home. If a child speaks a language other than English, the school is required to use the English Language Proficiency Assessment for California (ELPAC) to determine whether the student is an English learner.

Up until last school year, students in transitional kindergarten, or TK, had to take this test as well. But the California Legislature exempted these children after educators reported that 4-year-olds were , and advocates said young children were being identified as English learners simply because they were too young to answer the questions on a test not designed for preschoolers.

An  by the California Department of Education found that transitional kindergartners were more likely to have a low proficiency score in English on the ELPAC. In 2023-24, the last year that the ELPAC was required in TK, 81% of TK students tested were at the lowest level of English proficiency, compared to 67% of kindergartners tested. 

Beginning last year, transitional kindergartners were not assessed for English language proficiency, a decision many TK teachers celebrated.

For now, California has no formal way of determining transitional kindergartners’ English proficiency, which means schools miss out on federal and state funding for English learners. Schools are not required by law to provide students with language services or report their academic or language progress on the California School Dashboard.

But this summer, the state Legislature set aside $10 million in the budget to select a new screener for schools to use to identify TK students who need more help learning English. The state superintendent of public instruction has to select a list of screeners by , which will then be tested in some districts in 2026-27 before requiring screening in 2027-28.

“We are still in the early stages and details about the screener selection process are coming soon,” said Michelle Hatfield, a spokesperson for the California Department of Education.

The Legislature also made a temporary fix to help schools recover what they lost in state funding for TK English learners until 2027.

Teachers wary of testing

There’s some controversy over whether a new screening instrument is necessary for children this young.

“Technically, they’re all learning English at this age,” said Jacquilla Burris, a TK teacher in the Fresno Unified School District. “There’s not a lot of difference for a child who is a non-English speaker.”

She and other teachers interviewed by EdSource said they are relieved that students are no longer required to take the ELPAC and questioned why the state needs another assessment.

“I think it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money. For TK? Really?” said Paula Merrigan, who teaches TK in Castro Valley. 

She said all children in her class are working on developing their vocabulary and language skills, no matter their native language. For example, she frequently stops to clarify what words mean when reading a book, she said.

“Today I said, ‘Do you know what grin means?’ They said no. I was like, ‘Oh, it’s a smile,’” Merrigan said. “Even my native English speakers need the skills because they don’t have the vocabulary.”

However, many researchers and educators say schools need a way to identify which students need more language support.

“Some people might say we’re all learning language in TK,” said Bernadette Zermeño, professor and multilingual specialist with the California Early Childhood Mentor Program. “That’s true, and our multilingual geniuses, as I like to call them, need extra support.”

Screening can also help schools target materials and training for teachers.

“We need to ensure that we’re providing those tools and resources to schools to help support not just English but also the home language,” said Carolyne Crolotte, director of policy at Early Edge California, a nonprofit that advocated to exempt TK students from taking the ELPAC.

What tools exist

A screening instrument for this age group should focus more on speaking and understanding, rather than reading and writing, since most children have not yet learned those skills, researchers said. In addition, the vocabulary used should be more basic than for an older age group, and the assessment should be short and engaging, using games, stories and conversation. Researchers also said the most accurate assessment of a child’s language skills comes from observing how they interact with others.

Teachers said it is crucial that young children be observed or tested in an environment and with a person with whom they feel comfortable. Otherwise, children may be too shy or anxious to get accurate results.

A 2024  by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and New America found that 15 states require screening of preschoolers to identify whether they are English learners. Most use one of five screeners — , , ,  and  — most of which were not developed specifically for students who speak languages other than English.

“It’s all over the place,” said Rebecca Bergey, principal researcher for AIR. She said some states, like Texas and Illinois, require screening to identify English learners in preschool in part because they have laws requiring schools to provide bilingual programs if they have a certain percentage of English learners, and to prioritize how to use funding.

Other states have chosen not to identify English learners until kindergarten, partly because bilingual children are developing both languages simultaneously at this age, she said.

“Language in this time frame is developing so rapidly and changing and dynamic. So I think there’s some caution. Even the best-designed assessment is going to be limited in what it tells us. And there’s a risk of inappropriately identifying students,” Bergey said.

California’s preschool survey

California already has a family language survey, with a follow-up interview, used in state-subsidized preschools, which serve the same age group as TK, for identifying preschoolers who are . The term is used to recognize that a child is learning both English and their home language at the same time at this age. 

“There’s this continuous missed opportunity of alignment with our preschools, that’s not addressed enough,” said Zermeño. “We shouldn’t be a whole separate entity.”

However, she and others said the survey and interview need to be complemented by teacher and parent observations to pinpoint areas where students need extra support. She recommended that TK teachers have paid time to visit families’ homes so they can observe how the child speaks English and other languages with different family members. Those observations can then be complemented by observation of how a child interacts with peers and teachers.

Several TK teachers said the survey alone should not be used to identify students as English learners, in part because parents don’t always disclose the languages other than English spoken in the home to avoid their children being labeled an English learner, which they sometimes perceive as a disadvantage.

At the same time, teachers said, other parents report that a language other than English is spoken at home, but in reality, though adults may speak another language, the children only speak English.

Even some students who only speak English have a hard time passing the English proficiency test, teachers said, which is one reason they are concerned when students are misidentified early on.

“Maybe they’re special ed, maybe they’re absent all the time, maybe they’re in foster care, maybe they’re homeless, maybe they have a certain home life, and because of that they’re lacking so many skills,” said Marcella Gutierrez, a Mountain View TK teacher. “We don’t want kids labeled English learners when they’re just behind academically.”

EdSource reporter Lasherica Thornton contributed to this article.