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Tuesday, June 9, 2020

The LAUSD Budget Under Covid - LA Progressive

The LAUSD Budget Under Covid - LA Progressive

An “Economy of Care” or of Institutional Protection?



Now we have seen manifest the power of budgets.
In the wake of the profoundly inequitable calamity of Covid19, has grown an international paroxysm that Black Lives Matter. In Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti is calling for “$250 million in cuts from city departments, including the LAPD, … steer[ing] the funds to invest in job programs, health initiatives and other services supporting the Black community and other communities of color.” And since it is the city council that is in charge of the purse, more weighty still is a resolution from Council President Martinez co-introduced with CD10’s Wesson and CD9’s Price instructing identification of least $100m-$150m to be cut specifically from LAPD’s budget.

So it is that a budget is proverbially “a political document”:  what politics are reflected in Superintendent Beutner’s Revised May 2020 Budget for LAUSD?

The teacher’s union board, UTLA, has voted to reallocate school police funding.
So it is that a budget is proverbially “a political document”:  what politics are reflected in Superintendent Beutner’s Revised May 2020 Budget for LAUSD?
A plan to prioritize savings that squeeze individual students, teachers and the service offered by the District, while protecting the core administrative function of the institution itself. Failing to search out or advocate for funding already promised by other institutions and government shifts the burden onto the individuals at the bottom of the totem pole whose labor is dismissed.

Presented revisions

On May 19, 2020 LAUSD’s board of education (BOE) heard from Chief Financial Officer David Hart (video @ 1:34m, slides here).
Following the 3-year (schoolyear) SY 2022-23 budget modified by  CONTINUE READING: The LAUSD Budget Under Covid - LA Progressive