Los Angeles Unified reaches settlement with parents over pandemic distance learning
Agreement would require tutoring, teacher training and assessments to address alleged harms to Black and Latino students; court approval still required
Los Angeles Unified School District has reached a settlement with parents who sued over the district’s distance learning programs during the COVID-19 pandemic, ending a five-year legal battle that alleged the remote instruction failed to meet state education standards and disproportionately harmed Black and Latino students.
Under the proposed agreement, the nation's second-largest school district would provide at least 45 hours of significant tutoring services per year to more than 100,000 of its most vulnerable students for the next three years. The deal also calls for expanded teacher training and mandatory assessments designed to identify and address learning losses among affected students. The settlement must be approved by a court before it takes effect.
Attorneys for the families, who filed a class-action lawsuit in 2020, said the measures are intended to help the district’s most disadvantaged students recover academic ground lost during the period of widespread remote instruction. "For nearly five years, we have fought tirelessly on behalf of LAUSD students and their families to enforce students’ constitutional right to basic educational equality,” Edward Hillenbrand, one of the plaintiffs' pro bono attorneys, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The lawsuit alleged that the district’s distance learning model did not meet state educational standards and had a disproportionate negative impact on Black and Latino pupils. The settlement requires the district to implement supports targeted at those students, though the precise mechanics of eligibility, scheduling and delivery of tutoring services were not detailed in the parties’ public statements.
Attorneys for the parents call the settlement a substantive remedy to address disparities exposed by the pandemic. The agreement’s combination of direct tutoring, teacher professional development and standardized assessments is intended to simultaneously support students and equip educators to address identified gaps.
A message seeking comment was sent to Los Angeles Unified. The school district has previously said it faced unprecedented challenges during the pandemic as it shifted rapidly to remote instruction and later to hybrid and in-person models.
If approved by the court, the settlement will conclude litigation that began in 2020 and will obligate LAUSD to deliver targeted services over the next three academic years. The case highlights broader national debates over pandemic-era learning loss, educational equity and the role of remedies tied to litigation in public school systems.