In the 2024-25 school year, the 1,008 schools of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) experienced their highest-ever cumulative grade scores, largely due to higher grades in the poorest and traditionally most underperforming schools.
Among the education components underpinning this success was the adoption of social-emotional learning practices in these schools. These also helped to create significant gains in student behaviors and happiness, school safety, and a lowering of screen addiction. Other school districts around the country reported similar improvements after adoption of SEL practices, which relate strongly to the workforce development “soft skills” that businesses seek.
These gains are now in serious jeopardy. In June 2025, LAUSD reported it was forced to cut $1.5 million from its budget for social and emotional learning owing to federal defunding of these programs by the Trump administration. Thousands of district students will now be denied this vital learning.
School districts around the country reported similar cuts. This at a time when SEL, funded strongly by the Biden administration, had palpably helped bring millions of kids back from the brink of mental health issues, learning problems, and acting-out behaviors spawned by Covid restraints.
EQuip Our Kids!, a leading advocate for these skills, is releasing two 1-minute video spots to help build parent and business opposition to these cuts that risk undermining decades of progress.
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