Education Equity

Despite the longstanding educational inequities in underserved and underresourced South LA schools and the widening achievement gap due to the COVID-19 pandemic, CoCo youth and families have shown remarkable resilience. They are fighting to defend and implement core community-centered policies, signaling new battlegrounds in which organizations like CoCo must continue advancing educational equity and offering rapid response/ interventions for South LA youth.

Equity is Justice

For the last decade, Community Coalition, alongside its core partners in the Equity Alliance for LA’s Kids, including InnerCity Struggle, Catalyst CA, and the Partnership for LA Schools, have fought to move LAUSD towards equitable funding through the Student Equity Need Index (SENI). SENI is a powerful budgeting tool developed by residents and co-created with the district that redefines equity with academic, health, and community-level indicators. $700M is distributed using the SENI annually, with high and highest-need schools getting the largest allocations. The current fight is to ensure the district’s total commitment and expansion of the policy while ensuring that funds are spent on resources informed through student and parent engagement and decision-making. 

CELEBRATING 10 YEARS OF SENI

Police-Free LAUSD

After a successful campaign that ended “willful defiance suspensions” and established the School Climate Bill of Rights in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Community Coalition has continued its efforts to decriminalize youth through the Police Free LAUSD Coalition. In 2020, the Police-Free LAUSD Coalition was created and successfully pushed LAUSD to redirect 35% of its budget ($25 million) to funding alternative safety resources and supports rooted in mental health, restorative justice, and community-based safety practitioners.  The core steering committee includes Community Coalition, Brothers Sons Selves Coalition, Students Deserve, ACLU Southern CA, Black Lives Matter LA, CADRE, InnerCity Struggle, Labor Community Strategy Center, Million Dollar Hoods, Reclaim Our Schools Los Angeles, Social Justice Learning Institute, UTLA, and Youth Justice Coalition. 

Black Student Achievement

The Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP) is a transformative initiative that was first implemented in September 2021. It is rooted in the community campaign to redirect funding away from school police to build holistic and student-centered supports for Black students and families. The impact of BSAP is a testament to the potential for positive change in the educational system, making stakeholders feel optimistic about the future.