Former Los Angeles schools superintendent Austin Beutner is trying to stop proposed legislation that he says would allow officials to strip away voter-approved arts-education funding to schools. The proposed bill, he said, also could provide legal immunity for L.A. Unified, which he accuses of violating the law by allegedly using arts funding for other purposes. L.A. Unified has denied wrongdoing in how it has used the funds and also said it played no role in developing the bill.Supporters of the bill have defended it as making the new arts funding more accessible for schools.Until now Assembly Bill 2440 — which has made it most of the way through the legislative process — has enjoyed broad support, including from arts organizations, with no opponents emerging. But that changed late Tuesday, when Beutner sent a letter to state Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, a South Bay Democrat who is sponsoring the legislation. Beutner said the bill attempts to rewrite Proposition 28, which voters approved by a nearly two-thirds margin in 2022. Proposition 28 sets aside an amount equal to 1% of the state’s base education funding — close to $1 billion per year — to increase arts education. This extra funding is drawn down from the general fund — so it adds to the total allotted for education. A key provision is that the new arts money must supplement and not replace money already being spent on the arts. The proposition’s supporters did not want to see a zero-sum game — where new arts money simply replaced existing arts money. They wanted to prevent arts money from being raided for other purposes. Beutner wrote Proposition 28 and also backed the campaign financially with his personal wealth. “As proposed,” Beutner wrote, “AB 2440 will gut two essential elements of the law: a requirement that Prop. 28 funds be used to expand arts education at every school so every student will benefit, and a further requirement that children in low-income communities benefit even more.“This is not some arcane dispute over language that Sacramento bureaucrats can resolve behind closed doors,” he added in his letter. “The California Constitution requires the legislature to go back to the voters if it wishes to amend or repeal a voter-passed law like Prop. 28.”On Tuesday, before Beutner’s letter went out, Muratsuchi, in response to a query from The Times, described the new bill as a good-faith effort to make the new arts funding more accessible. “I introduced AB 2440 to address strong concerns raised by arts-education advocates and school districts,” Muratsuchi said. “The clear message we heard was that many school districts have been struggling to navigate legal ambiguity regarding compliance with Proposition 28.”On record as backing the bill are the Alameda County Office of Education, California County Superintendents, California Music Educators Assn. and California Teachers Assn. With that seeming wide sweep of support, the bill passed the state Assembly in May by a vote of 74 to 0, with six votes not recorded. The bill still has to go through the state Senate before reaching Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature or veto. What happened in L.A. UnifiedFrom the get-go, Beutner said he was concerned that some school systems would misuse the new arts money — leaving students no better off than before in terms of arts education. For that reason, the law forbids using the new funding simply to maintain existing levels. Moreover, Proposition 28 states that the arts funding, which is generated by student enrollment, must go to the school in which those students are enrolled. School leadership, such as the principal or a school committee, is supposed to control the use of the dollars. And, schools in higher-poverty areas receive more money.In an interview, Beutner praised school systems including Long Beach Unified and San Diego Unified for following the spirit and letter of the law. But such is not the case, he alleges, with L.A. Unified, the state’s largest school system, where he served as superintendent for three years — from mid-2018 through mid-2021.“LAUSD has done exactly what the law prohibits,” Beutner alleged in a lawsuit filed in February 2025. “It has eliminated existing funding sources for existing art teachers, and replaced those funds with Proposition 28 funds, thereby violating the requirement that the funds supplement rather than supplant existing sources.”The lawsuit lists 37 elementary schools with the same or reduced money for arts instruction from 2022-23 to 2023-24 — when the new funding first arrived — and alleges that most L.A. Unified schools faced a similar funding situation.Prior to the lawsuit, but in response to growing criticism, L.A. Unified officials quietly added $30 million to the elementary school arts budget for the 2024-25 school year amid ongoing accusations from Beutner, union leaders and parents.“We continue to follow implementation guidance as provided by the state of California to ensure that we are fully complying with the requirements of Prop. 28,” the district said in a statement at the time of the lawsuit, a contention that it has made repeatedly.Critics responded that the added funding was well short of what was legally required to be provided. In an Aug. 15, 2024, internal memo, which was obtained by The Times and later cited in the lawsuit, L.A. Unified officials acknowledged to the Board of Education that they had used new arts money, for example, to replace existing funding for 167 out of 227 elementary arts instructors during the 2023-24 school year. Meanwhile, money that had been used for arts was redirected for other purposes, which were not described in the memo.District officials said in that same memo that their actions were legal because overall district spending on the arts increased in an amount surpassing what was provided by Prop. 28. In presentations, the district has cited other funding sources that paid for field trips, for example.State education officials, including state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, have avoided taking sides. A senior education department official has advised districts to consult their own attorneys about how to spend the money. The uncertainty created by such lack of guidance has become one of several legitimate problems that needs resolution, said Troy Flint, chief communications officer for the California School Boards Assn. “Proposition 28 has been difficult to implement for many reasons, including the need to increase the number of qualified arts educators, unclear fiscal requirements, and a lack of guidance from the state,” Flint said. “AB 2440 is the first attempt to address some of these challenges, and it includes welcome and long overdue changes. Most significantly, AB 2440 would specify how local educational agencies are supposed to know if they are supplementing, and not supplanting, existing funds, which is currently unclear.”A letter of support from the Alameda County Office of Education stated that, under the proposed bill, “Districts are deemed in compliance if their current-year arts spending meets or exceeds a baseline of existing funds, accounting for any resources that are no longer available.”That description is literally the situation that Beutner was trying to make illegal under Proposition 28. In an interview, he said he is not against developing practical solutions if needed. In his letter, he said he does not want the state Legislature to give L.A. Unified a “get out of jail free” card to excuse its past and possibly current practices.Although hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake for L.A. Unified, district officials emphasized detachment from the proposed legislation.“We have had brief conversations with Muratsuchi’s office to understand the intent of some of the amendments,” the district said in a statement, “but have not taken a formal position or sent language requesting amendments.”Also signing the letter with Beutner were leaders of the group Parents Supporting Teachers, which had helped gather data documenting the funding shifts — data that L.A. Unified had refused to provide.
