Endorsement: Yes on Measure US. LAUSD students need safe and welcoming schools

Robin Mark of the Trust for Public Land measures the surface temperature of the asphalt at Castellanos Elementary in Los Angeles in 2022, before the school’s mostly paved campus was transformed into a greener, park-like schoolyard. And there’s no getting around the major post-pandemic increases in construction costs that have kept the Los Angeles Unified School District from doing all it had planned with its existing bond money. Measure US on the Nov. 5 ballot is a $9-billion bond measure designed to help LAUSD address the backlog of construction projects and the inevitable maintenance needs that will arise in the coming years. The school board voted to put Measure US on the ballot with very little public outreach — so little that the head of the district’s bond oversight committee said he couldn’t comment on it because he hadn’t had a chance to vet it. Beyond that, as school board candidate and bond critic Dan Chang has said, the district hasn’t done enough homework to figure out what it needs.