New law eases use of Proposition 28 arts funds while LAUSD battles $77 million lawsuit
A California law aims to simplify access to Proposition 28 arts funding for small districts, but Los Angeles Unified School District remains sued over alleged misuse of $77 million of the money.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2440, a bill designed to remove legal uncertainty and let small school districts more readily use the roughly $1 billion a year allocated by Proposition 28 for arts education. The legislation, supported by arts organizations, school officials and the California Teachers Assn, received unanimous legislative backing and includes provisions allowing districts to pool resources for shared arts teachers while protecting them from financial penalties.
At the same time, Austin Beutner, who authored Proposition 28, has filed a lawsuit alleging that Los Angeles Unified School District illegally diverted the new funding, supplanting existing arts budgets and violating the law's supplement-not-supplant requirement, with claims of up to $77 million misused. The suit lists dozens of elementary schools where arts funding did not increase after the program began. LAUSD maintains it is complying with state guidance and recently increased its elementary arts budget by $30 million for the 2024-25 school year. The dispute highlights tensions between state efforts to expand arts education and district-level implementation challenges.
