With this week’s approval of a $7.5 billion budget for LA Unified’s upcoming school year, advocates in Los Angeles for Latino education highlighted their priorities to best support Latino students’ success. Here are some of their top goals and how they fared in the budget:

• Community schools
• Safe schools, including restorative justice programs
• Title I funding for schools serving the lowest-income families
• Access to libraries and after-school programs

A new interactive map on how safe Los Angeles schools are shows a wide swath of red in predominantly Latino, poor and immigrant neighborhoods, indicating students and teachers report not feeling safe.

But one neighborhood with those same demographics stands out for its lack of red. Boyle Heights/East LA is an oasis of green and yellow, meaning that students at most of those schools feel safe or somewhat safe.

The area has been a focus of intense community activism among Latino advocates. They attribute the sense of safety in the schools to high parent involvement and a coalition of community organizations that have pushed for positive behavior intervention and student support policies, particularly in the Boyle Heights community.

InnerCity Struggle (ICS) is proud to have partnered with the Los Angeles County Arts Commission in order to resource our Media Justice Academy this past July. Every year, during the summer season, 50 ICS youth engage in a week-long institute where they study the definition and history of action-based media and how it is used to galvanize social movements. Students learn how to think critically about media portrayals of people of color and immigrants and how to create alternative visions that highlight the Eastside community’s cultural assets and strengths.

It was hard not to eavesdrop in the tiny Pico-Union studio where Maria Garcia grew up.

She was around 9 when her father came home one day from his low-wage job as a garment worker and told her mother about the immigration raid at his downtown L.A. factory.

She could hear their relief that her father hadn’t been found.

The Board of Supervisors took steps Tuesday to ensure Boyle Heights residents have a voice in shaping development around LAC+USC Medical Center.

Supervisor Hilda Solis recommended hiring a consultant to facilitate a partnership between the county, USC and local residents, hoping to generate a shared vision for the campus and community.

“It is important we make sure everyone gets a seat at the table,” Solis said.

Residents and community advocates told the board that they’ve been excluded from conversations about development of the campus for too long.

On the morning of Monday November 14^th, nearly 4,000 students from 18 LAUSD schools, including all seven of the local Eastside high schools: Roosevelt, Garfield, Mendez, Torres, Solis, Wilson and Lincoln walked out of their campuses in protest to the presidential election outcome and to raise their voices in support of their families and communities.

Indeed, community schools are guided by a philosophy that schools and neighborhoods work together to offer services identified by students and parents as crucial, said speakers at InnerCity Struggle’s Eastside Community Schools Convening on Aug. 27 at Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez High School. For the Ruiz family, that would mean adding more specialized services to students with special needs in the schools.

Ruiz’s son was diagnosed with autism when he entered kindergarten. The younger Ruiz walked on his tippy toes and could barely talk.

Most high school students usually spend their lunch time hanging out with friends.

For Eduardo Pacheco, it was a different story.

Instead, the recent high school graduate spent his lunch – and even breaks during classes – rummaging for cans and plastic bottles that he could recycle. Every little bit of money he earned helped his family, who had a difficult time making ends meet after his father couldn’t find a construction job during the recession.

The Eastside Community Schools Convening — hosted by InnerCity Struggle (ICS) — will take place Thursday, Aug. 27 at Mendez High School, 1200 Plaza del Sol, Los Angeles, 90033 from 8:30 am – noon. 

The event will bring together key allies and stakeholders, as well as organizational and community leaders to discuss the importance of community schools.

InnerCity Struggle opposes the proposed 710 freeway tunnel that would run from El Sereno to Pasadena because it would not reduce traffic in the area and would worsen air quality for thousands of residents.

The proposed tunnel would start where the 710 northbound freeway lanes end at Valley Boulevard in Alhambra. It would pass underneath hundreds of El Sereno homes and disproportionately impact the neighborhood that includes El Sereno Arroyo Playground where many children play daily. Bringing more traffic to an area where children live would put them at an increased risk for such health problems as asthma and cancer.