LOS ANGELES (CNS) – Los Angeles Unified School District students and Proposition 28 author Austin Beutner can move forward for now with a lawsuit against the school district and Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho in which they allege there has been a misuse of $76.7 million in Prop. 28 funds dedicated to art and music education.

The LA Superior Court suit further contends that hundreds of thousands of students have been deprived of receiving expanded arts and music instruction as mandated by law. On Wednesday, Judge Rupert A. Byrdsong overruled a challenge by the district in which defense attorneys said the lawsuit was “replete with baseless allegations of wrongdoing that improperly conflates distinct legal requirements of Prop. 28.”

Beutner, 65, is an investment banker and philanthropist. He was the LAUSD superintendent in 2018-21 and is challenging Mayor Karen Bass in the June 2026 election.

At the time of the filing of the lawsuit on Feb. 10, parents of the plaintiffs, all of them LAUSD students, issued a joint statement about the suit, calling art and music education essential for their children to develop the skills they need in the classroom, in their careers and throughout their lives.

One plaintiff, a 15-year-old Franklin High School Latina student, has never been able to take an arts class at that campus, or when she was previously enrolled at Luther Bank Middle School, the suit alleges.

“Although plaintiff Alana S. is required to take at least one art class to graduate, she is not sure whether she will be able to get into one at Franklin High School because of how rare they are,” according to the suit, which further states that her mother is looking for an after-school art program as a replacement.

“LAUSD is denying our children and their classmates the expanded arts and music education in every school that Prop. 28 provided,” the statement read. “We are disappointed that we must go to court to compel Supt. Carvalho and LAUSD to follow the law.”

The lawsuit is supported by unions representing nearly all of LAUSD’s workforce, including United Teachers LA (UTLA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 99 and Teamsters Local 572.

Passed by California voters in 2022 to address the longstanding underfunding of arts and music education, Prop. 28 provides dedicated funding to school districts to hire arts and music teachers and aides at all campuses so that each student benefits from increased arts and music instruction.

The official ballot pamphlet, prepared by the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, states that schools must certify that the funds were spent in addition to existing funding for arts education programs. Prop. 28 also provides additional funding for schools attended by students who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals, in recognition that students from low-income families and particularly Black and Latino students often suffer the most from a lack of art and music education.

In accepting Prop. 28 funds, school districts are required to use this money to increase and not replace funding for existing art and music instruction and to allocate at least 80% of the funds to hire arts teachers and aides to provide music and art instruction.

“LAUSD failed both requirements,” the suit alleges.

But according to the LAUSD attorneys’ court papers, the plaintiffs initiated the litigation just months after the first year of funding for the 2023-2024 school year was final and before the state even provided final allocations of funds for the 2024-2025 school year. While the lawsuit, on the one hand, alleges the misapplication of the law, it fails to state a claim because the district has complied with the statute and the complaint is premised on a misreading of the law, the LAUSD lawyers contend in their pleadings.

“Judicially noticeable documents make clear that the district properly allocated funds to its schools under the statutory formula,” according to the LAUSD attorneys’ court papers.

The next step in the proceedings is a case management conference on Feb. 19.