The Fight For Public Education

2022 LAUSD Report Card: Failing But Looking Forward To Improvement

Looking back on a year full of lost opportunities for community engagement while looking towards the positive changes that 2023 should bring.

“Take a stance, start now, and fight back against the system that has left us to rot and fester.”

- Axel Brito

The pace of change in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is frustratingly slow, even when it involves the health and safety of our children. As a candidate in 2015, I highlighted the district’s “flushing policy” that required schools to run every water fountain “a minimum of 30 seconds” before school each day. This “stop-gap measure” was enacted seven years earlier following an NBC4 report that showed aging pipes and water fountains were leaching lead particles into the drinking water at LAUSD facilities. In the next seven years, I would still see signs mandating these flushings on water fountains when I visited my children’s schools.

The failure of the school district to prioritize the replacement of lead fixtures and installation of filters to protect the developing brains of children is indicative of a school board that has been controlled by the charter school industry for years. Instead of putting Kids First, board…