

The Las Virgenes district changed its name to the West County Union High School District. The merger left the Topanga School District and the Las Virgenes Union School District as separate remnants of the Los Angeles City High School District. On July 1, 1961, the Los Angeles City School District and the Los Angeles City High School District merged, forming the Los Angeles Unified School District. The LACHSD was catered to high school students, and was a result of annexations of high school districts in the area. The LACSD was formed to serve elementary and junior high students, originally starting with the same borders of the city of Los Angeles and annexing various smaller elementary school districts throughout its existence. The Los Angeles Unified School District was preceded by two districts: the Los Angeles City School District, formed in 1870, and the Los Angeles City High School District, formed in 1890. Main articles: Los Angeles City School District and Los Angeles City High School District As part of its school-construction project, LAUSD opened two high schools ( Santee Education Complex and South East) in 2005 and four high schools ( Arleta, Contreras Learning Complex, Panorama, and East Valley) in 2006. An ambitious renovation program intended to help ease the overcrowded conditions has been completed.

More recently, there are signs that the district is showing improvement, both in terms of dropout and graduation rates. In 2007, LAUSD's dropout rate was 26 percent for grades 9 through 12. LAUSD has been criticized in the past for extremely crowded schools with large class sizes, high drop-out and expulsion rates, low academic performance in many schools, poor maintenance and incompetent administration. The LAUSD school construction program rivals the Big Dig in terms of expenditures, and LAUSD cafeterias serve about 500,000 meals a day, rivaling the output of local McDonald's restaurants. The LAUSD enrolls a third of the preschoolers in Los Angeles County, and operates almost as many buses as the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. LAUSD has its own police force, the Los Angeles School Police Department, which was established in 1948 to provide police services for LAUSD schools.

The school district's jurisdiction area consists of the city of Los Angeles and all or portions of several adjoining cities in southwestern Los Angeles County, California. The school district's budget for the 2021–2022 school year was $10.7 billion, increasing to $12.6 billion for the 2022–2023 school year. It is the second largest employer in Los Angeles County after the county government. During the same school year, it had 24,769 teachers and 49,231 other employees. During the 2022–2023 school year, LAUSD served 565,479 students, including 11,795 early childhood education students and 27,740 adult students. It is the largest public school system in California in terms of number of students and the 2nd largest public school district in the United States, with only the New York City Department of Education having a larger student population.

Los Angeles Unified School District ( LAUSD) is a public school district in Los Angeles, California, United States. United Teachers Los Angeles, California Teachers Association
