Introduction

The Equity Alliance for LA’s Kids, made up of Community Coalition, InnerCity Struggle, Catalyst California, and the Partnership for LA Schools, is a coalition of students, families, educators, and advocates working toward systems change rooted in educational equity and racial justice.

Recently, LAUSD has proposed a Fiscal Stabilization Plan (FSP) with devastating cuts that decimate core equity structures and programs for students, families, and staff. These include eliminating the hard fought, community won, $700 million investment in the Student Equity Needs Index (SENI) and reducing the $175 million investment in the Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP) investment by over 80%. These cuts strip schools’ capacities to maintain the staff, programs, and supports needed to provide students an equitable opportunity, at a time when many students and families are navigating economic hardship, fear of immigration enforcement, and broader attacks on public education and racial equity.

In June 2025, LAUSD adopted the “Budgeting Based on Equity and Student Need” resolution, which called for equity protections and an equity impact analysis to assess how budget decisions would affect high-need student groups and school types. However, the district has yet to provide a comprehensive analysis that fully examines how proposed reductions will disproportionately impact historically underserved students and high-need schools.

This page seeks to help fill that gap by conducting a deeper examination of the equity implications of proposed budget reductions from FY2026 to FY2027 and the impact of critical investments like SENI. At this critical moment, we call on LAUSD to uphold its commitment to equity by protecting high-need schools, meaningfully engaging community, and ensuring budget decisions do not punish the students and families who already stand to lose the most.



The Inequitable Impact of Budget Cuts on Students and Schools

SENI Budget Change by School and SENI Category Map

This map shows the percent change in the SENI budget between Fiscal Years 2025-26 and 2026-27 by LAUSD school and SENI-need category. If you toggle on and off the filters by SENI-need category, you will see that the orange dots, which represent the steepest cuts in budget are concentrated in the schools with the highest, and high need. The map also shows the SENI and Total Budget change in dollar amounts, the Black Student Achievement Program (BSAP) group, and the percent change in total budget.

Budget cuts disproportionately impact SENI high- and highest-need schools

Schools in the highest SENI Tiers are also the schools that lost the most SENI Budget. In total, schools are budgeted to lose $88 million ($88,691,353) in SENI funding or an average of $113K ($113,271.20) per school.

The decision to make large budget cuts is the biggest factor driving the loss of SENI funding when compared to loss of SENI funding due to enrollment decline. For example, when you look at the difference between schools losing fewer students and either losing fewer or more SENI dollars, there is a difference of nearly 20 times (-$8K compared to -$152K), despite the below-median enrollment decline for both. Similarly, when looking at the difference between schools losing more students, there is nearly a 10 times difference (-$19K vs. -$185K). While there were some cuts corresponding with enrollment decline, enrollment did not significantly change the amount of cuts. For example, -$152K compared to -$185K is only about a $33K difference, which is not as much as the steep cuts would otherwise imply.



Which students will be impacted the most?

Topline Findings:

  • Black, Latinx, and ELL enrollment are all positively correlated with school need tiers, meaning cuts to SENI budgets will fall unevenly on these groups.
  • English Learners are the most impacted group. Nearly four times (3.8) as many English Learners are in the highest-need schools compared to the lowest-need schools. While 30% of English Learners are in highest-need schools, only 8% are in lowest-need schools.
  • Black students are also heavily impacted; 1.5 times as many Black students are in highest-need schools compared to lowest-need schools (7,371 vs. 4,777).
  • Similarly, 1.4 times as many Latinx students are in highest-need schools compared to lowest-need schools (56,350 vs. 40,414).



SENI Equity Investments Positively Impacts Students and Empowers Schools

What types of investments does SENI offer schools?

SENI funds support investments in staffing, programs, and services across the three pillars of the district’s Strategic Plan, especially for students facing the greatest barriers to opportunity. Key investments by pillar include:

Academic Excellence

  • Instructional staff for individualized and small-group support
  • Tutoring, literacy, and math interventions
  • Student progress monitoring
  • College and career readiness programs

Joy and Wellness

  • Mental health, nursing, and health supports
  • Attendance interventions and family outreach
  • Campus aides to promote safe and positive school environments

Collaboration and Engagement

  • Parent liaisons, translators, and family support staff
  • Family communication, workshops, and community resources
  • Targeted supports for English Learners, low-income students, and foster youth
    To see specific examples of the types of investments that SENI allows at school sites, see this sample set of schools.

A significant portion of SENI funding goes toward staffing, who provide the supports students need every day.

SENI budget cuts substantially weaken schools’ abilities to maintain such critical staff. Due to these cuts across FY26 and FY27, schools lose nearly 20% of their FTE, which stands for Full-Time Equivalent and essentially equates to the number of full-time staff.

What types of investments does SENI offer schools?

Schools serving students with the greatest needs experienced some of the strongest gains across important outcomes. The findings below highlight why sustained and protected investments in SENI high- and highest-needs schools matter for improving student outcomes and advancing educational equity.

The following findings are based on the most recent student SENI investment data reported in the 2024-25 LAUSD LCAP, comparing outcomes between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years.

  • All SENI High and Highest Need schools across all grade levels experienced increases in student performance for SBA Math and ELA.
    • Highest-need elementary schools experienced the largest gains in SBA performance, improving by 13.4% in Math and 12.2% in ELA.
    • High need high schools experienced some of the largest gains in SBA Math, improving by 9.3%.
  • High and highest need schools experienced the largest gains in graduation rates compared to other SENI school categories.
    • High needs schools improved by 5.5 percentage points, while highest need schools improved by 3.9 percentage points.
  • High needs schools saw the strongest improvement in A-G completion, increasing by 9.5 percentage points.
  • Across the Annual LAUSD School Experience Surveys, parents in higher-need schools reported stronger improvements than those in lower-needs schools, specifically around feeling more included in school decision-making and equipped to engage in their child’s education.
  • Chronic absenteeism declined substantially across nearly every SENI school category, especially in elementary schools.
    • Improvements in elementary chronic absenteeism are especially significant as research shows that early attendance patterns are strongly linked to later academic engagement and academic outcomes.
    • Source: National Center for Children in Poverty - i. Chang, Hedy N., and Mariajose Romero. 2008. Present, Engaged, and Accounted for: The Critical Importance of Addressing Chronic Absence in the Early Grades. New York: National Center for Children in Poverty.

Downloadable Tables

The tables below include the total processed data in a wide format (the first table) and a metadata table with the sources for each variable in the first table (the second table). They can be filtered or sorted interactively or downloaded to a csv or excel sheet.



Methodology

We used the FY 2025–26 and FY 2026–27 initial proposed total budgets and total enrollment by school data, FY 2025–26 and FY 2026–27 SENI allocation data, and Census Day enrollment data from FY 2025–26 to project FY 2026–27 enrollment by subgroup. Using that as a basis, we calculated subgroup enrollment shares relative to total school enrollment to estimate what percentage of the SENI and total budgets would be allocated to those student groups. We focused specifically on data for Black, Latinx, and English Language Learner students as our groups of interest. For school-level budget and enrollment data totals, we pulled the estimates already calculated in our data sources.

Data Sources

Metadata