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The Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board of Education unanimously approved a big, beautiful bureaucratic budget on June 24, ignoring the long-term viability of the nation’s second-largest school district. It is already spending more money than it takes in year after year, hemorrhaging taxpayer funds as student enrollment declines, test scores suffer, and not a single “public servant” is laid off. These failures are a national public school crisis.
Student enrollment has steadily declined in Los Angeles, attributed to lower birth rates, a dramatic increase in homeschooling, and younger families moving to more affordable states. The district educated 746,831 children in 2002 but currently has 408,083 students. The 46% drop cannot be blamed solely on the pandemic – enrollment was already declining precipitously despite large numbers of anchor babies encouraged by the Biden administration. Los Angeles lost 11,000 students in just the past year.
The district’s website states: “Centering justice and equity, the SENI highlights issues that disproportionately impact Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities yet remain unaccounted for in traditional funding models.” Aside from the overtly racist (and thus potentially unconstitutional) foundation for much of this spending, taxpayers simply cannot afford it. The current 2025-2026 budget of $18.8 billion exceeds the anticipated $15.9 billion in revenue for the next fiscal year despite the district’s projected decline of 6,491 students for the same period. A further financial burden hangs over LAUSD due to the amount it has borrowed through bond issues in order to settle several billion dollars of sex abuse claims; $500 million in bonds have been issued (estimated to cost a total of $765 million at current interest rates).
Federal funds have stanched the fiscal drain currently being plugged in Los Angeles using rapidly depleting resources. California law requires large school districts to maintain reserves; otherwise, the county will take control. School closures or consolidations for “unviable” schools will likely follow. The Los Angeles school district reportedly funded a “Rainbow Club” for LGBT children as young as four and now plans for the fiscal future as if it believes in unicorns.
Like many public schools in America, the Los Angeles system places more importance on employees and social justice ideology than on the children taxpayers fund it to teach. Los Angeles test scores are atrocious. LA School Report states:
“In the 2023-24 school year, 43.1% of all LAUSD students met state proficiency targets in reading, compared with 44.1% in the 2018-19 school year, the last before the pandemic.
“Statewide, 47% of students are proficient in reading, compared to 43.1% in LA. In math, 32.8% of LAUSD students are proficient, compared to 35.5% statewide.
“LAUSD also trailed behind the state in its science scores. LAUSD proficiency rates on science tests were 24% in 2024, up 1.8 percentage points from 2023. Statewide it’s 30.7%.”
During the pandemic, many families were forced to educate their children as schools shut down. This taught parents some interesting things when they tuned in through online systems; they were shocked to discover what their kids were experiencing in public schools, educationally and socially. Many found that they could use the same tools to teach their children at home, protecting them from peers, partisan indoctrination, and inept teaching.
Public schools nationwide are losing the confidence of parents while siphoning off ever more taxpayer dollars for failed systems that, like Los Angeles, have no accountability. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center revealed the top reasons parents choose to homeschool are concerns for their children’s safety and emotional health, academic instruction, and moral values. According to Pew:
“The most common reason given by parents of homeschooled children is concern about the school environment – such as safety, drugs or negative peer pressure (83% of parents of homeschooled children cite this as a reason).
“About seven-in-ten (72%) say dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools is a reason … Large majorities of parents of homeschooling kids also cite the preference to provide moral instruction (75%) and the desire to emphasize family life together (72%).”
Black and Hispanic families far outpace whites in fleeing public schools, threatening the “equity lens” used by zealous left-wing administrations and teachers unions to justify government largesse. Black and white children alike have shown improved standardized test scores (15%-20% higher) and SAT scores when taught at home, and statistics suggest they are more likely to graduate from high school (67% as compared to 59% of public school students nationally) and more likely to remain in college.
Surveys indicate that 80% of Americans agree that homeschooling is more effective than public school education. The percentage of children taught at home over the past 20 years has increased by 55%; one study concluded homeschooling had risen by 90% over the decade ending in 2022. In California, it increased by 78% between the start of the 2017 and 2022 school years. California now has more homeschooled children than any other state, 547,561, representing 13% of all American homeschoolers and more than the shrinking Los Angeles Unified School District.
The writing is on the wall for America’s public education system, and it isn’t graffiti. Parents want better academic outcomes, protection from bullying, and improved mental health for their children. The nation’s public schools are failing in these areas. Many state legislatures oppose school choice and independent school options, perceiving them as threats to state control and tax revenue. As California shows, the real threat to public schools is their own failures, from which many more parents are rescuing their struggling children.