00:00The Los Angeles Unified School District, or LAUSD, is the second largest public school
00:05district in the nation, and it's in danger of going insolvent. In fact, as the California
00:10Post has reported, LAUSD is going to have to cut 6,000 or so jobs just to stay afloat
00:15unless it can fix its financial problems. Now, these financial problems have been a
00:18long time coming. At the beginning of the year, LAUSD was already projected to have
00:22a $200 million deficit. But then, the United Teachers LA, or UTLA, the local union representing
00:27teachers in the district, threatened to go on strike in the middle of the semester,
00:31throwing the entire system into chaos, potentially, and forcing working parents to stay home to
00:35take care of their kids. So, the district capitulated, and it gave the unions more than a billion
00:40dollars in raises. Now, just before the school board approved this compromise, the county
00:45office of education sent a letter to each school board member saying that if they approved this
00:49deal, the district could go insolvent. They voted for it anyway, and therefore, the district
00:55is now in danger of financial collapse. There's another problem, and it has to do with a law
00:59that Gavin Newsom signed back in 2018 at the height of the Me Too era. The law is called
01:03AB 218, and it extended the statute of limitations for suing for childhood sexual assaults to an
01:09almost absurd level, and there was no cap on damages. So, all of a sudden, school districts
01:13and local governments all over California were facing these sexual misconduct lawsuits, and
01:17they started paying out settlements. LAUSD has authorized bonds for $750 million just to pay
01:24for these settlements for alleged past sexual misconduct. Newsom signed a kind of legislative
01:29fix earlier this year called SB 577, and it raises the evidentiary standard a little bit,
01:34but it doesn't cap the damages, and so the problem is still lingering for LAUSD. Add to that some of
01:39the
01:39enduring bad management that is a hangover from the COVID era and the Black Lives Matter era,
01:45things like low attendance and the slashing of funding for the school police, and you have a district
01:50that has many, many problems, and some of them are local, but some of them go straight to the top
01:54to the office of Governor Gavin Newsom, and it's a legacy that's going to follow him on the campaign
01:59trail.
