LAUSD May Limit Where Charter Schools Can Co-Locate

The Los Angeles Unified School District board took a step Tuesday toward limiting the presence of charter schools on school campuses that serve “vulnerable” students.

California public school districts are required by law to share space with charter schools. To meet the need, LAUSD has co-located dozens of charter and public schools on the same campus.

The motion approved by the board on Tuesday gives district staff until early November to draft a policy that prevents charter schools from moving onto campuses the district considers to be strategic priorities, those targeted for extra funding and other resources.

“It's to create criteria that protect innovative programs and minimize the harm that colocation is due to our most vulnerable students and schools,” said LAUSD Board President Jackie Goldberg in explaining the resolution at a September 19 public meeting.

The current co-location policy has made nearly everyone unhappy at some point over the last two decades.

“Anytime you have ambiguity, you should expect confusion and confusion leads to conflict,” said Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who is now responsible for reporting back to the board with a potential solution. “I think that's what we're seeing now.”

Traditional public school educators say they’ve lost valuable space for music, food pantries, counseling, and therapy to charter school co-locations. Charter school operators have had to split their students between multiple campuses and say the district has done the bare minimum to meet their students’ needs.

Charter school supporters say the expected policy will further limit their ability to serve the same vulnerable students the resolution aims to protect.

“Creating these exclusions on paper, before even considering the specific needs of each region, demographic trends, what is available space is simply, like, the wrong way to approach it,” said California Charter Schools Association President and CEO Myrna Castrejón.

The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) issued a statement Tuesday denouncing the board’s decision.

“CCSA will support charter public school students by reaching out to Superintendent Carvalho to work collaboratively on solutions that support inclusivity and educational excellence across LAUSD,” Castrejón wrote.

Why LAUSD shares campuses with charter schools

California voters passed Proposition 39 in 2000. The primary goal of the proposition was to make it easier for schools to get money for construction and repairs by requiring bonds to be approved by a lower percentage of voters. But the proposition also required public school districts to share space with charter schools.

The law says school districts have to provide “reasonably equivalent” facilities to charter school students. The district has to try and meet the charter school’s preference for location and cannot move the charters “unnecessarily.”

The continuing disagreement over how the law is interpreted has resulted in multiple lawsuits, including one that required LAUSD to change how it calculated space for charter schools.

LAUSD reviews requests from charter schools seeking space on traditional public school campuses annually. It offers spaces based on several factors including the charter’s projected attendance, desired geography and the space requirements for district programs.

Sometimes, the district finds it can’t fit a charter school onto a single campus and instead offers classrooms at multiple schools.

The district fines charter schools that overestimate how much space they need— though these overallocation fees went uncollected for years. As of June 30, the district had collected nearly $8.4 million in overallocation fees and charter schools still owed $3.7 million.

L.A. Unified’s overall enrollment has declined for years and district staff report the number of charter schools requesting space each year is also decreasing.

L.A. Unified is providing space for 52% fewer charter school students this school year than at its peak in the 2017-2018 school year of almost 23,000 students.

What the proposed resolution says

Board President Jackie Goldberg and Board Member Rocío Rivas co-authored the resolution, which directs Superintendent Carvalho and district staff to create a new co-location plan within 45 days. The board will have to vote before the policy could be enacted.

The goal is to avoid placing charter schools on campuses that are:

• Deemed a “priority school” because of low academic achievement.
• Part of the Black Student Achievement Plan, which provides additional funding and support to schools with significant Black student enrollment.
• Community schools, which provide social services like health care and food assistance to students and their families. 

The policy also includes less-defined goals like avoiding co-locations that “compromise District schools’ capacity to serve neighborhood children.”

Goldberg added an amendment Tuesday asking that the future policy clarify how the district defines “empty classrooms” for the purposes of determining what space charter schools can occupy on a traditional public school campus.

Charter schools currently co-located with traditional public schools wouldn’t face immediate changes. But if they change how they operate — such as by adding grade levels or seeking more space — they could trigger the new policy.

The board is also seeking more oversight of charter school co-locations.

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