Los Angeles Unified School District is preparing to slash more than 6,000 jobs over the next three years after years of adding staff while enrollment collapsed — and the working-class employees who keep schools running will pay the price while the central-office apparatus that engineered the crisis stays intact.
The California Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team issued a stark warning Tuesday: LAUSD is at "high" risk of insolvency and could exhaust its unrestricted reserves by the 2027–28 school year. The district's projected structural deficit is so severe, the state watchdog warned, that delaying cuts will force even deeper reductions later.
Here is the damning arithmetic. Between 2019-20 and 2024-25, noncharter enrollment plummeted from 440,365 to 369,830 — a 16 percent drop. Yet total full-time equivalent staffing grew from 60,344 to 64,148, a 6.3 percent increase. Students per employee fell from 7.3 to 5.8. The district hired more people to serve fewer kids.
Where did the money go? Payroll. Salaries and benefits consumed 90.8 percent of LAUSD's unrestricted general fund budget for 2026-27, well above the 86 percent statewide average for unified districts. Former LAUSD board member David Tokofsky put it plainly: the district "sits on its hands with 100s of employees making 200k plus annually, and waits for a solution to come out of heaven."
The state report noted that while individual schools face enrollment-based staffing formulas, "comparable enrollment-based reviews are not consistently applied to central-office departments." The bureaucracy shields itself while the classroom bleeds.
United Teachers Los Angeles Vice President Julie Van Winkle called the state evaluation "rigged" and said it "disparages the school board for rightfully addressing the needs of working people." The union's position: a financial crisis is no reason to stop spending.
The pattern repeats elsewhere. In New Jersey, Stockton University just laid off 21 employees — including 14 faculty — as enrollment fell from 9,500 to 8,300 and state aid was cut. Staffing accounts for 61 percent of Stockton's budget. The university is burning through $24.6 million in reserves to cover shortfalls and raised tuition 3 percent. Administrators call it "right sizing."
In northern Illinois, diesel prices have nearly doubled to $6.75 a gallon, squeezing school transportation budgets. Kankakee School District 111's assistant superintendent Lyle Neal warned the district could burn through its annual fuel budget in seven months. Smaller districts are consolidating bus routes and cutting extracurricular travel.
The through-line is clear: institutions that expanded during flush years cannot contract without punishing the people at the bottom. LAUSD added thousands of positions it could not sustain, insulated its highest-paid central-office staff from the enrollment formulas applied to schools, and is now preparing to dump thousands of workers — all while the same leadership that presided over the bloat keeps its salaries and authority. Tokofsky warned that if the projections hold, the board will lose its salary, its authority, and the superintendent will be relieved of duty. That would be accountability. Don't hold your breath.
