In an exclusive interview with KCRW ahead of the 2024-2025 school year, Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho expands on cellphone ban technology, responds to concerns about school closures, and says he doesn’t anticipate police will return to campuses.
The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Robin Estrin: LAUSD students improved their reading and math scores on state tests this past spring, but it's still pretty dismal. More than half of students in LA Unified aren't reading at grade level. Just one-third are proficient in math. What is the most important thing you plan to do in the coming year to remedy that problem?
Alberto Carvalho: So we celebrated, obviously, the fact that for the first time in many years, the school district was able to improve academic achievement levels for all grades in reading and math across the board, with the biggest gains actually being achieved by some of the students in the most fragile schools. Our priority schools saw, particularly in reading — third, fourth and fifth grade – growth of two to three times that of the district. That's truly narrowing the achievement gap.
But as you correctly stated, we cannot be satisfied with that. We need to return our students to pre-pandemic level and then beyond that. Academic achievement levels prior to the pandemic were not acceptable to begin with. So it will take massive amounts of strategic before- and after-school tutoring programs; during-school intervention activity, meaning the best of the best of our teachers providing small group instruction, particularly to the neediest of all students; it will require digital content available 24/7 to our students; and then what our teachers do so beautifully, which is differentiated instruction during the school day, targeting the students based on their achievement level, providing the acceleration, the remediation, the intervention, and the before- and after-school resources.
A teacher at Fries Avenue Elementary School in Wilmington helps a small group of students learn to read using a curriculum grounded in phonics instruction. Photo by Robin Estrin/KCRW
District enrollment has been declining year after year for decades. This is important because when a district loses students, it loses money, but the costs of keeping schools open and staffed stay the same. Is there a point where school closures become inevitable?
There's always the possibility that should enrollment continue to decline, that you may in fact face that dire condition. We are nowhere near that position. I'll tell you why.
Even though the enrollment across Los Angeles Unified, much like every other large district across the nation, has been experiencing [decline], I have to say that the rate of decline over the past two years has actually slowed down quite a bit. We are currently declining at around 1.8 to 1.9%. That is a sharp decrease in the rate of decline over previous years.
The loss of enrollment also accelerated during and immediately post pandemic. Our ability to recruit middle and high school students back into LAUSD is very reduced – very, very difficult. However, having recently enrolled 24,000 UTK students, 4-year-olds and 3-year-olds, we believe we'll have a chance to actually reverse the declining enrollment trend, stabilize enrollment going to next year, then possibly actually see some increase in enrollment.
I want to be clear about one thing. What we're experiencing here in Southern California – and it's true in San Diego, it's true in Los Angeles, in other smaller districts – is a declining enrollment, not because of educational conditions in school districts, but because of the surrounding economic conditions. High cost of living, unaffordable housing, wages that often don't match up against those economic conditions, have forced people out, particularly out east or to other states.
But I do believe if we keep emphasizing aggressive recruitment into the public school system during the earliest years of education – UTK – we may, in fact, be able to keep those students, stabilize enrollment, and over time, actually reverse the decline in enrollment, which has been observed in this district for the past two decades.
UTK – Universal Transitional Kindergarten – is LAUSD’s new grade for 4- year-olds. The district rolled out this new grade two years ahead of a state mandate. After the 2022 school year, the state fined the district millions of dollars for not meeting mandatory ratios of adults to children. What do you say to people who feel like the grade was rolled out before the district was able to fully staff that new grade?
I would understand the criticism, but what I would say is this: We were bold in launching universal transitional kindergarten for all parents across all elementary schools, as you correctly said, two years in advance of the state mandate.
We have a coalition of superintendents and legislators in Sacramento willing to change the current regulation, which assesses massive fines against small infractions in terms of one or two additional students in one single school. Meaning, no matter the size of violation, the level of fine is excessive.
And this is a conundrum, by the way, that has nothing to do with the timing of our launch. Districts across the state will face this challenge this year and going to next year because of a very inflexible policy.
Let me explain what I mean. Let's say you have a residential school. A new family comes in, and they have two 4-year-olds. Those two 4-year-olds should have every right to enroll in their neighborhood school. If at that school you have two UTK classes, but they are already at the ratio, what shall you do with that family? Tell them they cannot enroll? Tell them they have to drive four, five, six miles away? Or should there be some degree of flexibility specific to enrollment – not because we do not have enough teachers or aides, but because sometimes there are some logistical issues that need to be taken into account like the one I just described.
So we will continue to work with Sacramento legislators to create some legislative flexibility when it comes to the ratios for UTK.
Does the district have enough adults to meet the requirements from the state this upcoming school year?
I believe we do. In fact, our vacancy fill rate for credentialed teachers is the highest it's ever been. We expect that we will start on day one with every single classroom across Los Angeles Unified staffed with a credentialed teacher.
What I cannot predict with certainty is whether or not, in the last one to two days prior to the beginning of the school year, if there will be some demographic shifts in one specific zip code that may, in fact, turn what was a perfectly staffed school into a school that now is above the ratio.
I want to turn now to school safety. Incidents of fighting and drug use on school campuses have skyrocketed from pre-pandemic levels, according to the district's own data. In 2020 the district removed school police from school campuses. But more recently, an LAUSD safety task force recommended what's essentially a reversal of that policy: In May, the task force suggested that schools should be able to decide if they want to station a police officer on campus. Do you support bringing police back to school?
Let me begin with some truths. Gun violence, the occurrence of bullying actions, fights in schools where you have a permanently deployed police officer – in the state of California or across the country – compared to schools where you don't have that type of deployment, the difference in a number of incidents does not necessarily vary.
Secondly, where we have seen the most egregious examples of mass shootings, those have taken place disproportionately in schools that actually had school resource officers assigned to them. So we ought to be very honest about that type of data.
You are correct when you state that compared to pre-pandemic levels, the level of anxiety, the level of depression, suicidal ideation, fighting and bullying have all increased. That is why we as a school district have taken decisive measures in creating new programs and investments, anything from additional counselors, psychiatric social workers, peer-to-peer counseling and coaching at high schools, the development and launch of an anonymous reporting tool called LASAR, the ability to create awareness, both with students as well as parents, regarding the dangers of certain drug products, particularly fentanyl, the deployment of Narcan units, and the training of both staff and students have all been done and accomplished.
I do not anticipate at this point that the police deployment model, based on board approved policy, and led by the board prior to my arrival, that that policy will change anytime soon.
Student at Alliance Cindy & Bill Simon Technology High School in Watts plays a game on his cellphone during a U.S. History lesson. Photo by Robin Estrin/KCRW
The district is implementing a cellphone ban in schools starting in January. What will that look like? What is your plan?
I'm very happy you actually asked me this question after the previous question, because I believe — and there is significant research that suggests — that a lot of the behavioral issues that students are demonstrating in school, but also outside of school, emanate from this over-dependency on social media platforms that they access through their cellphones, robbing them of important social interaction with their peers. The truth of the matter is that students accessing their cellphones during the regular school day also impacts their ability to concentrate on their studies, keeps them distracted, and research also indicates a strong tie between mental health conditions -– stress, anxiety, suicidal ideation and bullying — to the overuse of cellphones and the media apps that reside on their cellphones. The policy is in response to those realities.
We are still about five months away from the implementation of the policy, which will take place sometime in January or February of 2025. Where we are, currently, is having aggressive conversations with teachers, parents, researchers, students themselves regarding this topic. We want their opinions. We want to hear their voices.
We’re simultaneously, on a parallel track, examining the different tools and technologies that currently exist that we could utilize in the near future, such as safe-keeping devices for the cellphones during the day, unlockable only by the owner of the phone. Also, advanced technologies that basically block out the signal, much like what happens when you put your phone on airplane mode – disabling the ability of the phone to communicate via text or access to digital apps.
We know that this carries some degree of controversy, but look. Across the state of California, statewide policy is being contemplated to achieve the same goal. The state of New York, state of Florida, a number of districts in Texas – this is a wave that's sweeping across the country.
I do think that we need to be careful in how we implement the policy. For example, there have to be some exceptions. Some students who are English language learners use their cellphones for the purpose of translation, so we are working those angles. We're also exploring the issue of safety, security and parental communication – how that can be best be achieved even with a cellphone ban. That's the level of research that we embarked on.
We believe we will be ready with a final policy to be implemented in the first part of 2025 – without disproportionately impacting the vigilance that some people feel would fall on teachers. Teachers don't need additional work, so there needs to be a policy that is practically implemented in a way that does not add additional work to anyone else.
I want to leave it off with a final question, what are you looking forward to? What makes you feel optimistic?
This is the year of going beyond limits. Through the great work of our teachers and leaders and support staff, attendance significantly improved at or above pre-pandemic level. Chronic absenteeism reduced dramatically more so than other large urban districts across the U.S. As we discussed earlier, academic achievement rates – all grade levels, reading and math – all improved with the greatest level of improvement observed by the schools that have historically struggled the most. Graduation rates two years in a row improved – now just shy of 87%.
I'm excited about redoubling these efforts, accelerating performance, and exploding the possibility for our students. I'm excited about the 48 new programs, initiatives, and investments – in arts [and] music … dual enrollment, a new Principal Academy, universal transportation for all, electric buses, WiFi. I'm excited about the promise of Los Angeles Unified, soon to be the highest performing urban district in America.