01/17/2019
Submitted on behalf of Dennis Hagen-Smith:
REFLECTIONS UPON THE LAUSD BUDGET
• LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner continues to claim that he cares about the schools and would like to help, but lacks the funds. He says that LAUSD’s record-breaking surplus, nearly 2 billion dollars, must be saved due to LAUSD’s annual deficit of nearly 50 million dollars. UTLA points out that LAUSD has been referring to this “deficit” for years, but its surplus continues to grow … casting doubt upon the existence of an annual deficit.
• Many teachers point towards the immense size of LAUSD’s off –campus administration as the place to make cuts. In fact, LAUSD’s own taskforce stated that LA Unified “spends 40% more per pupil on school administration than the median peer district, approximately 150 million overall.” In 2014, LAUSD spent $119 million on administrative expenses and had 150 central office positions making $100,000 or more. These numbers have only increased in the past few years. (Quoted in “Two Ways to Reduce LAUSD’s Budget Shortfall” by Jonathan Butcher published in the Daily News on Sept. 11, 2018).
• For the past several years, LAUSD has had to pay a $35 million annual penalty for exceeding the state’s administrator-to-teacher ratio. (“Is the Los Angeles Unified School District ‘too big to fail’?” By Dan Walters; published in the Daily News on June 24, 2018).
• There are so many off campus administrators working downtown that they no longer fit in the Beaudry Tower complex. That’s right, LAUSD now has an office on Temple St. to house additional administrators!
• If Superintendent Beutner and the LAUSD Board of Education is serious about improving our schools and settling this labor dispute, they need look no further than cutting their own administrative costs!