As LAUSD shows academic gains, ICE raids continue to drive Latino student withdrawals and long-term mental health stress heading into 2026
As Los Angeles schools move into 2026, the story of education is no longer just about test scores, graduation rates, or post-pandemic recovery. For tens of thousands of Latino students and families, school has become one of the few remaining places of relative safety in a climate shaped by persistent immigration enforcement, mounting fear, and prolonged psychological stress.
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second-largest school system in the nation, stands at the center of this contradiction: measurable academic gains and record graduation rates on one hand, and on the other, a silent withdrawal of Latino students driven not by academic failure—but by fear.
Academic Progress Meets a Human Crisis
Under the current superintendent’s tenure, LAUSD has made real, documentable progress. Reading and math scores on state exams have rebounded sharply since the pandemic, in some cases outpacing statewide recovery. Graduation rates reached a historic high—approximately 87 percent in 2024—growing faster than California’s average. Early adoption of phonics-based “science of reading” instruction has helped stabilize literacy outcomes, particularly in elementary grades.
Yet these gains mask deeper instability.
Nearly two-thirds of LAUSD students still fail to meet grade-level math standards, with Latino students and other historically underrepresented groups disproportionately affected. Pandemic learning loss has not disappeared—it has merely become layered with new trauma.
And now, the district is confronting a crisis that no curriculum reform alone can fix.
ICE Raids and the Quiet Exit from Classrooms
In 2025 alone, LAUSD lost more than 13,000 immigrant students—overwhelmingly Latino—amid intensified ICE activity across Southern California. Families pulled children out of school, relocated suddenly, or kept students home for days or weeks at a time, fearing encounters with immigration agents.
For many students, the stress is not abstract. It is personal and immediate: a parent detained at a job site, a knock on the door before dawn, or the daily anxiety that a normal school drop-off could become a point of separation.
School administrators have reported incidents of bullying fueled by this climate—students being taunted with phrases like “show me your papers.” Principals describe children asking teachers what will happen if they never see their parents again.
This is not a temporary disruption. It is a sustained psychological condition.
Mental Health Under Chronic Stress
Latino students in LAUSD are experiencing not just fear, but prolonged distress—what mental health professionals describe as toxic stress. Unlike a single traumatic event, this form of stress compounds over time, impairing concentration, memory, emotional regulation, and long-term academic engagement.
LAUSD has responded with a range of mitigation strategies:
- Expanded “safe passage” routes and walking school buses staffed by volunteers and district employees
- Distribution of “Know Your Rights” cards and family preparedness guides
- A donor-funded legal aid and compassion fund
- Trauma-informed training for teachers and staff
- Partnerships with county mental health services and programs like CalHOPE and Soluna
These efforts matter. They have helped create what district leaders describe as “perimeters of safety” around school campuses.
But district officials, counselors, and community advocates increasingly acknowledge a hard truth: the need far exceeds the resources, and the stressors driving student anxiety are not going away.
Why 2026 Could Be Worse
LAUSD enters 2026 facing declining enrollment and serious financial constraints. Fewer students mean less state funding, even as the demand for counseling, legal referrals, and social services rises. The district’s spending currently exceeds revenue, and while reserve funds exist, they are finite.
At the same time, immigration enforcement remains unpredictable, and election-year rhetoric often amplifies fear rather than easing it.
This creates a dangerous feedback loop:
- Fear drives students out of school
- Enrollment drops deepen budget gaps
- Budget gaps limit mental health staffing
- Limited support increases distress and disengagement
For Latino students already living with uncertainty, the system’s capacity to respond is stretched thinner each year.
The Political Moment: Superintendent Election and Community Accountability
Adding urgency is the fact that 2026 is an election year for the LAUSD superintendent position.
For Latino families and advocates, this moment demands sharper questions.
The community should be asking candidates:
- How will you protect school-based mental health services during budget shortfalls?
- Will you commit to culturally responsive, bilingual mental health support at every campus?
- How will you measure and publicly report the mental health impact of immigration enforcement on students?
- What is your plan when enrollment declines but trauma increases?
- Will you advocate at the state level for structural mental health education, not just crisis response?
Leadership in this moment is not about managing optics—it is about confronting reality.
The State Debate: Mental Health Education as Prevention
One proposal sits at the center of that debate.
State Senator Susan Rubio has pledged to reintroduce SB 531 in 2026, a bill that would integrate mental health education into California schools. The legislation was rejected by the State Assembly last year, despite growing evidence that early mental health literacy reduces stigma, improves help-seeking behavior, and strengthens long-term academic outcomes.
Supporters argue that SB 531 is not an add-on—it is a preventive tool, particularly for communities facing chronic stress like immigrant and mixed-status families.
Parriva.com has been actively promoting a petition urging lawmakers to pass SB 531, framing it as a necessary response to the mental health realities Latino students already live with—not a theoretical future crisis.
SIGN PETITION TO RE-SUBMIT AND PASS SB 531
What’s at Stake
For Latino students in Los Angeles, school is no longer just a place of learning. It is a refuge, a stress point, and sometimes a line of defense against forces far beyond the classroom.
LAUSD’s academic progress under current leadership deserves recognition. But success metrics that ignore mental health are incomplete—and potentially misleading.
As 2026 unfolds, the question is not whether Latino students are resilient. They have proven that repeatedly.
The question is whether institutions—school districts, state lawmakers, and elected leaders—are willing to meet that resilience with sustained, systemic support before fear, withdrawal, and trauma erase the gains already made.
Education policy, in this moment, is mental health policy. And for Latino families, it is inseparable from dignity, safety, and the right to learn without fear.
