School Board Meeting

On March 3rd, 2019, I attended a school-board meeting for Inglewood Unified School

District. The meeting was categorized as a “special board meeting,” a meeting intended to

discuss budget matters specifically. The meeting was modestly attended, and the board discussed

the expenditures of the districts Special Education Department. Based on fiscal data, IUSD

spends approximately 35% of its budget on Special Education needs which includes;

Instructional Aides, behavior intervention, one-on-one Behavioral Aides for students with severe

needs, Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy, Psychologists, Physical Therapy, and varied

additional resources to support students with exceptional needs.

The board discussed ways they can cut back on excessive funding; suggesting the district

reconsider how students are referred for IEPs and to what extent those referrals should be

considered. Clyde Woodworth Elementary was discussed in detail, as the only school in the

district that supports students with severe special needs. The board laid out a budget concept for

the school and recognized the financial benefit of the campus merging with neighboring Monroe

Middle School. With this merging, the district was able to cut expenditures and saw an increase

of 500k in the districts overall budget. Though an increased budget is a positive, the overall

concern was how the money would be allocated to better serve the growing student and staff

demands and the board questioned whether it would be enough to carry the district out of

prolonged bankruptcy. With little solution, the board suggested capitalizing on the new Los

Angeles Rams Stadium set to open in Inglewood in 2020. Though the overall opinion of the

anticipated stadium was that of hopefulness, the board was in a virtual deadlock regarding how

to move forward with Special Education costs, finding it to be inequitable to shear costs for

students with special needs as a mode to hold back on district disbursements.