A judge sided with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in its ongoing legal battle with the Los Angeles Unified School District over Title I funds.
Superior Court of Los Angeles County Judge Curtis A. Kin ruled in favor of the archdiocese, ordering LAUSD to produce records related to its calculation of Title I federal funding and reimburse for legal fees. The school district has until August 16 to produce the reports.
The ruling comes on the heels of a Nov. 16, 2023 decision by the U.S. Department of Education, which confirmed the California Department of Education’s findings that LAUSD illegally withheld federal funds from low-income LA Catholic school students and failed to meaningfully consult with the archdiocese on those discrepancies.
Both rulings should restore millions of dollars in federal money that goes to low-income students attending LA-area Catholic schools that qualify for Title I funding.
“We are grateful for the court’s recognition of the financial impact caused by the ongoing legal battle with LAUSD on behalf of underserved families of Catholic school students in need,” said Paul Escala, senior director and superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, in a statement. “This ruling also emphasizes the necessity for transparency in how LAUSD determines student eligibility for services.
“The Archdiocese is committed to advocating for our students to ensure that the Title I services that they need, and are legally entitled to, are returned to them by LAUSD, as well as a fair and equitable process for Title I services moving forward.”
The archdiocese originally filed a complaint in September 2019 after it said LAUSD had reduced the number of Catholic schools eligible for Title I funding to 17 after more than 100 schools had qualified in previous years. The archdiocese appealed to CDE and the department sided with ADLA in June 2021. The archdiocese filed a lawsuit in December 2021, alleging LAUSD had not taken corrective action.
The district appealed to the U.S. Department of Education and the lawsuit had been on hold until USDE issued its ruling in November.
According to the California Department of Education report, in the three years prior to 2019, LAUSD received an annual average of around $291 million in Title I funds and distributed between 2% and 2.6% among private schools. But in the 2019-20 school year, when it cut the Catholic recipients from 102 to 17, the district had received more than $349 million for Title I — an increase over earlier years — but distributed less than 0.5% among private schools.
The total amount shared with private schools dropped from roughly $7.5 million to $1.7 million, according to the report. Catholic schools reported receiving about $190,000 or 11% of the total for private schools.
The archdiocese said it had traditionally utilized Title I funds to provide special teachers, counseling and extra assistance to struggling, low-income students.
The loss of those teachers and counselors “has prevented those students from having the supplemental learning that they need in order to maintain grade-level performance, and also to deal with the remedies necessary to close the gap on any learning losses they experienced due to the pandemic,” Escala said in 2021.
The archdiocese’s Department of Catholic Schools is the largest system of non-public schools in the nation, with 250 elementary and high schools and more than 68,000 students.
