The Los Angeles school district plans to issue up to $500 million in bonds to cover the cost of past alleged sexual misconduct, debt that the district will repay over time.

The move comes amid a wave of similar claims, some dating back to the 1970s, affecting public agencies, churches, and private institutions across California.

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The Los Angeles Unified School District has faced about 370 sexual abuse claims, according to information released Monday.

Officials said the Los Angeles Unified School District will initially issue $303.6 million in bonds, an amount needed to pay off short-term, low-interest loans the district has used to cover payouts totaling $302 million during the current fiscal year alone.

Although Superintendent Alberto Carvalho is authorized to issue up to $500 million in bonds, a district spokesperson said, “Estimates indicate that additional amounts over $500 million may be required.” These are known as judgment obligation bonds.

Unlike traditional bonds for school construction and modernization, judgment bonds do not require voter approval. Instead of being repaid through increased property taxes, they are funded directly from the district’s general operating budget.

The payments stem from Assembly Bill 218, a 2019 law that opened a three-year window, ending in late 2022, allowing adults to file lawsuits over childhood sexual abuse dating as far back as the 1940s. The law also permanently extended the statute of limitations, giving survivors until age 40, or five years after discovering the impact of the abuse, whichever is later, to file claims.

Thousands of lawsuits have since been brought against religious institutions, public and private schools, sports organizations, and nonprofit groups. In many cases, the accused perpetrators have been dead for decades.

Since Jan. 1, 2020, about 370 people have filed child abuse claims against LA Unified under the law, the district said. Of those, roughly 76 allege abuse from the 1940s through the 1970s, and another 45 to 50 cite incidents from the 1980s.

According to district records, dozens of cases have been settled or dismissed, while more than 275 claims remain active.

“Since the passage of AB 218, we’ve received lawsuits from dozens of adult plaintiffs who may have been victims of sexual abuse as students decades ago,” school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin told the Los Angeles Times. “If they all prevailed in the same fiscal year, we would pay hundreds of millions of dollars from our current budget, forcing impossible decisions about what to take away from this year’s students in order to pay for the wrongs done to student victims of the past.”

With the bonds, she added, “We can pay those settlements over time — approximately 10% of the total cost for each of 15 years — rather than all at once.”

“Los Angeles Unified unequivocally believes that survivors of sexual abuse deserve to be heard, supported, and empowered to pursue justice on their own terms,” the district statement said. “AB 218 has enabled victims of childhood sexual assault to seek justice with less legal limitations.”

“However, we must also acknowledge the very real and unintended consequences this law may have on public education, specifically that school districts — which rely entirely on taxpayer funding to serve students — may face lawsuits from decades past, even when current leadership, policies, and practices have changed dramatically. These legal actions, while rooted in rightful grievances, have the potential to bankrupt entire school systems.”

The school system isn’t the only place where widespread sexual abuse has been reported. 

In April, the LA County Board of Supervisors approved what is believed to be the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history, agreeing to pay $4 billion to victims who were abused as children in county-run juvenile facilities and foster care.

To cover the cost, the county, operating with a roughly $48 billion budget, is tapping into its rainy day fund and issuing special bonds.

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The full settlement amount will be made available to victims within five years, while the county anticipates repaying the bonds, with interest, over the next 25 years.

Although today’s school district leaders had little or no involvement in the decades-old misconduct cases, officials had offered limited transparency and public explanation until this week.