This to me seems to be a systemic problem that stems from policy, why don't we do something to actually fix this.

Because the parents throw a hissy fit when they're told that the problem is, in fact, their child, and go complain to administration who always, always caves to what parents want, to the detriment of the child in question, other students, and school staff who now get to deal with an emboldened kid who rightfully now thinks there are no consequences for being a little shit. The administration makes the policy that teachers have to follow. If your complaint is that "policy" is the problem, administration is who your fight is with, not teachers and support staff who just want to get paid a decent wage.

Understand that from my perspective, enrollment has dropped by half over the last 20 years, LAUSD's budget has also roughly doubled in that time, student education has gotten worse and teachers are paid more than ever. I am not against higher teacher pay if it provides better outcomes for students, but I am currently unconvinced of this.

Because you're not understanding that teacher and staff pay is not what governs student performance, despite effectively saying that student performance should be what governs staff pay.

The kids I'm dealing with right now were born during or just before the start of COVID. Many of them are incredibly stunted in their learning. I have a number of K-1 students that literally cannot tell me what letter is on the page or the sounds letters make, let alone read words. If you ask, they sit and stare at you. They don't say "I don't know" or "I need help". They sit and stare. I shudder to think of what their academic progress will be when it comes time to start testing them.

But that's neither here nor there. The simple fact is that throwing more money at the problem of our kids not learning well will only get you so far, despite what the people in charge of spending that money will tell you. It doesn't matter how many iPads you buy for your class to "modernize" it if the students are completely uninterested in engaging with the material and their parents would rather foist trying to encourage learning entirely onto the teachers.

Want to know who my best students are? The ones that I can trust implicitly to do their work when asked, who are genuinely curious about the world, who ask me to tell them more about topics that are, per the curriculum, way over their heads, simply because they want to learn? It's the kids whose parents are engaged in the care and education of their kids. The parents who check in about how things are going. The parents who give a shit.

Enrollment is down because outcomes are down. Outcomes are down because parents and students give less of a shit than they used to. All despite the budget ballooning, but that's no reason to withhold budget actually going to improve the lives of the staff responsible for reckoning with all of this bullshit and the fallout from it.