Source: The 74 Million
The Los Angeles Unified School District board was jolted last month when a top county official showed up unannounced to say, You’re spending more money than you make and the savings you’ve been living off of are about to run out. L.A. Unified has to act now, and it has three choices, the officials said: Make more money, cut spending, or do both. Candi Clark, chief financial officer of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, who is legally required to act if a school district will run out of money within three years, has given L.A. Unified until Oct. 8 to adjust its budget, including detailing exactly how the district expects to make the $73 million in cuts it has vowed to carve out of the next two years’ budgets. If the county isn’t satisfied, it will “disapprove” the district’s budget. The next step is assigning a financial expert to assist the district, then imposing a fiscal adviser. The final step would be a state takeover, which happened in neighboring Compton in 1993 and in Inglewood in 2012.