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LAUSD staff say required bank-time modules will be cut to seven and stress school flexibility for SEL
Summary
District instruction leaders told the Curriculum & Instruction Committee that a draft of memorandum 6015 will reduce required bank-time modules from 12 to seven and expand a choice board, while emphasizing principals' authority to tailor modules and embed planning time; teachers raised concerns about mandated "sanctioned" SEL time and supports for priority schools.
Los Angeles Unified School District administrators told the Curriculum & Instruction Committee that the district's bank-time professional development policy (Memorandum 6015, draft) will reduce the number of required modules and continue to emphasize school-level flexibility. Dr. Elizabeth Bernal, the district's administrator of elementary instruction, said the draft for 2026-27 reduces mandated modules from 12 to seven and maintains a roughly 50/50 split between district-determined and school-determined module topics.
"It's going down to seven," Bernal said, describing the proposed required modules as including literacy, math, science, English-learner supports, universal design for learning and MTSS; she said five of the seven are mandated by law or state requirements. Bernal repeatedly emphasized that the deck and facilitator guides include explicit places for schools to differentiate materials and substitute locally relevant curriculum so long as they use high-quality instructional materials.
Dr. Justin Lawler, who oversees middle-school instruction and SEL supports, described the district's SEL strategy as a three-part approach: creating welcoming classrooms, providing explicit SEL instruction aligned to six competencies, and integrating SEL across content with planning resources and micro-credentials for staff. Lawler said PD participation has scaled from about 2,500 educators two years ago to roughly 16,000 this year, and the district aims to reach over 17,000 next year.
Teachers in the meeting pushed back on implementation challenges. A dual-language teacher asked whether LAUSD will provide a "sanctioned" SEL period rather than rely solely on integration. Bernal and Lawler replied that the district will provide suggested schedules and that integration plus use of additional campus staff (counselors, coordinators) is the current approach; they said district guidance recommends embedded planning time in modules.
Other points from the discussion:
- The district said the choice-board topics will expand (from six in 24-25 to 11 in upcoming guidance) and that each topic contains multiple suggested activities to match school needs.
- Bernal showed examples of module slides that explicitly note where schools can substitute their own student work, protocols, or curriculum while keeping focus on the process (e.g., backwards planning).
- Committee members asked how priority schools and regions will be supported; Bernal and colleagues described supplemental regional PD, a priority-schools micro-credential stack, and regional support for PD plan implementation and monitoring.
Public commenters and a former board member raised complementary concerns: the availability of centralized mental-health resources, the need for stronger measurement tools beyond high-positive survey results, and inclusion of special-education perspectives when planning PD.
What's next: the memorandum is in draft and will inform the 2026-27 PD calendar; the committee signaled it will continue overseeing how flexibilities are communicated to principals and how embedded planning time can be sustained across the district.
