Los Angeles Unified School District

As state and local leaders throughout Los Angeles County and statewide work to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus, concerns remain about how such measures could impact youth and families involved with the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. 

This week, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) released a much-anticipated report focused on its response to the nearly 4,000 allegations of serious child abuse it had marked “no investigation” from January 2018 through June 2019.

In 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and the state legislature established a major program meant to close the achievement gap for disadvantaged students. The increased funding from it is supposed to go to help schools better serve vulnerable groups: students from low-income families, English language learners and foster youth.

Since the 2015 passage of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), school districts and child welfare agencies around the country have been tasked with developing transportation plans to keep foster youth in their schools of origin if that is what they prefer.

The Los Angeles Times and columnist Steve Lopez launched a critically important series on child poverty Sunday. Replete with both haunting and inspiring photos taken by the talented Francine Orr, readers are introduced to Telfair Elementary School in Pacoima, which has the inauspicious designation of “having more homeless students than any other in the district.”

With high rates of poverty among youth in Los Angeles, a new report prepared by civil rights advocacy group Advancement Project California called on the city to ramp up youth development efforts by drawing on revenue from legalized cannabis.