Above: UTLA members at Arleta High during the Welcome Back action in August 2025

With a relentless focus on reclaiming what was wrongfully taken, the Arleta High School community fought back and won against budget cuts stemming from LAUSD’s arbitrary change in the school’s longstanding funding formula. 

Since Arleta High was established in 2006-07 as a Local Initiative School under the Autonomous Schools plan, the school-site budget has been based on a pure per-pupil formula. But in 2023, the district unilaterally changed the school’s budget formula with no input, no warning, and no explanation. 

Triggered by the formula change, the district took back close to $2 million from Arleta’s budget and rollover funds, causing them to lose a college counselor, the coach of their city champion golf team, a math teacher, and a campus aide — staff who work with students every day.

“We have a visual and performing arts small learning community which was going to be decimated by cuts,” says Nicole Patin, Arleta Chapter Chair and 12th-grade English teacher. 

When educators and school admin asked the district why the change happened, they were falsely told the per-pupil formula never existed. The district’s budget cuts also threatened Arleta’s “four-by-four” schedule that allows for longer class periods, more time with students, and more time to do group discussions and project-based learning. 

“We said, Wait a minute, these are our funds based on how the formula is set up and and what is spelled out in our LIS plan,” says Hector Perez Roman, Arleta Vice Chair. “We knew this money was rightfully ours and our agreement should be honored.”

Patin then learned that Polytechnic High, a pilot school that also had per-pupil funding, had filed a grievance with the district on the same issue. So she worked with the UTLA Area rep to do the same.  

“We went ahead with the grievance process and on top of that decided to organize around it,” Perez Roman says.

With support from the school principal, UTLA members drummed up support among parents and alumni. They held Chapter meetings to lay out the issue and let staff know they thought this was a winnable case. They circulated a petition through social media that got thousands of signatures. Former students submitted testimonials in support. Parents called and emailed LAUSD School Board member Kelly Gonez to support returning funding back to Arleta. Parents also made calls to the then-Northeast Local School District Superintendent Andres Chait and other LAUSD officials. 

Patin also went onto Valley Views FM Radio show — a radio program run by Perez Roman — to talk about the loss of funding.  

“We got a lot of traction and media coverage,” Patin says. 

Putting pressure on the district from multiple angles forced LAUSD to take the Arleta High community seriously. Patin says officials from the district started calling her asking to meet because they wanted the phone calls and emails to stop.  

“The district had started with ‘there’s no such thing, that budget doesn’t exist,’ to ‘you’re not going to get anything back,’ to ‘you might end up with less money in your budget’ — telling us different things,” Patin says. 

During the grievance process, UTLA staff and Patin relentlessly followed up with the local district office as their auditor took several months to come back with a report. 

In March, Arleta High was notified that close to $2 million would be returned — a result of combining the grievance process with community organizing around the issue. Patin was thrilled when her principal came to her room to let her know the money had officially arrived in the Arleta account. The school can now afford to keep four teaching positions they had stood to lose without the funding, and they potentially could bring back some of the positions lost. 

Now the school’s LSLC will start discussions on spending priorities for next year. The LSLC always polls the entire school, including students, to make sure the budget aligns with school needs. That work will now go forward with the energy of this major budget win. 

“I’m super proud of what we did,” Patin says. “This is proof that when you fight, you win. The district is not going to give anything or do anything just because it’s the right thing to do — we have to fight for it.” 

UTLA members at Arleta High during the 2023 contract campaign.