LAUSD Will Sue State Over $38M in Mid-Year Budget Cuts

Acting on behalf of 38,000 magnet and special-education students, Los Angeles Unified will file suit today in federal court challenging state budget cuts that wipe out the district's $38million busing program for the rest of the school year.
Superintendent John Deasy got authorization for the suit during a closed-door session Tuesday with the school board. The meeting took place as Gov. Jerry Brown was announcing that a $2.2 billion shortfall in new revenue would trigger $980 million in cuts statewide.
"We will file a lawsuit that supports our students and will seek a (temporary restraining order)," Deasy said, sparking applause from magnet students in the audience who had spoken out against the looming reductions. "The district cannot tolerate another single solitary cut."
Along with the loss of $38 million for transportation - essentially half of the district's annual budget for busing - Los Angeles Unified will have to trim $8 million from its general fund. That's significantly less than the $188 million hit the district could have faced under the worst-case scenario envisioned by Deasy in the days leading up to Brown's announcement. However, the superintendent added that Brown said the state's public schools would hear about additional cuts in January if revenues still lag.
Warren Fletcher, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, put the trigger cuts into context, noting that the loss of even $8 million comes atop multibillion-dollar


That $38 million is going to be taken from the LAUSD's transportation budget. "A cut of this magnitude is devastating as it would deplete half of the District’s transportation budget after it has provided half a year of transportation services," said Deasy in a statement issued today by the LAUSD. Deasy goes on to explain that it is not as simple as just cutting services, because some of the services in question are mandated by a 1981 court order regarding desegregation as well as what allows for the transportation of thousands of special needs students.
Deasy on the cuts and the mandated services:
Due to the combined mandates, the trigger cuts force the District to choose between two illegal and unconstitutional outcomes. It must either terminate its transportation services in direct violation the Crawford court order (and federal and State law), or divert precious classroom dollars from its general fund to pay for the required transportation services
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Citing harm to their students as a consequence of these cuts, the LAUSD " will file a lawsuit tomorrow that supports our students in schools and acts aggressively to halt these devastating cuts associated with the budget triggers."
"They're not good,'' Governor Jerry Brown said of the cuts, according to City News Service. ``It's not the way we'd like to run California, but we have to live within our means.