School Reform:
Los Angeles Unified School District

By Craig Huey

The Los Angeles Unified School District is a huge bureaucratic failure for our kids and a huge waste of money for the taxpayers.

With over 700,000 students, its huge size makes it unresponsive and inefficient. Only 2% of the school districts in the nation have more than 25,000 students. According to a report by the Joint Committee on Reorganization of Large Urban School Districts, 45,000-50,000 should be the maximum number of kids per district.

The Los Angeles City Board of Education resists change, as do the bloated bureaucracy and teachers. And the results prove the problem. More than 1/2 of the students in Los Angeles Unified School District are dropping out.

Now, Assemblyman Cameron Smyth, Republican from the 38th Assembly District, has introduced AB 146 to break up the district. Let’s see what happens.