LAUSD settles lawsuit over pandemic learning setbacks

For many students, the move comes five years too late

- HOWARD BLUME

AL SEIB Los Angeles Times L.A. UNIFIED board member Kelly Gonez, left, and Megan Reilly, then interim superintendent, right, help Normont Early Education Center student Natalia Castillo on the first day of class instruction in 2021.

A hard-fought lawsuit to bring more live teaching and better technology to the Los Angeles school system at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic is ending — five years later—with an agreement to provide tutoring and other supports to an estimated 100,000 students.

The length of the litigation means that no student of high school age when the pandemic began will be able to benefit.

A group of parents alleged in the suit that the L.A. Unified School District failed to meet state educational standards, disproportionately harming Black and Latino students.

The settlement “ensures that over 100,000 of the district’s most vulnerable students will have access to no fewer than 45 hours of high-dose tutoring per year,” the advocates said in a statement. “That amounts to over 10 million hours of guaranteed high-dose tutoring over the next three school years.”

CARLIN STIEHL Los Angeles Times STUDENTS arrive last month for the first day of school at Maya Angelou High in South Park.

Appropriate tutoring is defined as small groups of six or fewer students or oneon-one sessions aligned with the student's classroom work. It would be available at least three times per week in 30-minute sessions.

L.A. Unified declined to comment on the settlement.

It had fought hard against the lawsuit, winning a dismissal in 2021 once campuses reopened. The parents, who have been supported by nonprofits Parent Revolution and Innovate Public Schools, appealed. A state appeals court reinstated the case two years later.