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LAUSD committee backs push to preserve job-order contracting, pursue bundling for shade projects
Summary
LAUSD advocacy staff described three legislative priorities — AB 1809 to preserve job-order contracting, SB 1107 to allow bundling of shade projects and a leaseback sunset extension — and answered board questions about ADA path-of-travel thresholds and timelines; staff said AB 1809 sunsets Jan. 2027 and SB 1107 will be amended to explore bundling.
Martha Alvarez, who leads state advocacy work for Los Angeles Unified, told the Facilities & Procurement Committee that the district is prioritizing three measures in Sacramento to reduce costs and speed construction work at schools.
Alvarez said AB 1809 would make the district’s long-used job order contracting (JOC) authority permanent or, if necessary, extend it for another 10 years; AB 1809 currently faces a sunset constraint, with officials noting the statute lapses in January 2027. Alvarez described JOC as a master-contract approach used for repetitive, smaller campus repairs — for example, pre-priced work orders for window or playground repairs that let the district skip a full bid for each small job.
The district is also pushing amendments to SB 1107 (sponsored by Sen. Stern), aimed at lowering the cost of shade-structure projects by letting the district bundle multiple small projects into a single procurement. Alvarez said one bundling scenario under discussion would group three campuses into one combined procurement worth roughly $1,000,000 to create better economies of scale.
Alvarez described a third measure the district supports — a sunset-extension option to retain competitive leaseback tools for school construction — as a policy the district wants to preserve as an available procurement tool.
Board members pressed Alvarez and Christina Tokes, the district’s chief facilities executive, about how bundling would interact with accessibility requirements. Members asked whether prior action reduced the ADA path-of-travel obligation to 20 percent and whether that 20 percent figure stems from a federal requirement. Alvarez and Tokes said the path-of-travel trigger is regulatory (not a statute), that staff are still refining amendment language for SB 1107 and that they will provide the committee a written briefing on the regulatory source and potential federal implications.
Alvarez said the office tracks roughly 500 bills and prioritized the three measures after consultation with facilities staff. She told the committee the goal is to reduce procurement and regulatory barriers so projects can be delivered more quickly and at lower cost.
The committee did not take a formal vote on the bills; Alvarez said LAUSD will continue to refine amendment language and work with legal counsel and the facilities office before the measures move further in the Legislature.
