Tension Persists as Charter Schools Withdraw from Shared LAUSD Campuses
The number of Los Angeles Unified schools sharing space with charter schools has declined 43% in the last seven years. Next school year, 41 LAUSD schools will house an independently run charter school on their campus.
Though fewer charter schools are requesting space on district campuses than at any time in the last 15 years, the co-location policy continues to create tension between the district and charter school operators .
What does the law say?
California voters passed Proposition 39 in 2000, requiring school districts to provide “reasonably equivalent” facilities to charter school students.
Charter school advocates say LAUSD has long denied students access to space they are legally entitled to and have filed several lawsuits . Some parents and traditional public school educators say sharing their campus deprives their students of resources .
How does co-location work?
Every fall, charter school operators can request to rent space in LAUSD schools based on their expected attendance the following school year.
District officials consider a list of matching guidelines that essentially try to answer the question: How can the district accommodate a charter school without disrupting existing programs and keeping students safe?
The district offers the charter space in the spring and they can choose to accept the offer, find an alternative agreement with the district, or reject the offer and find space elsewhere. In some cases, a single charter school is split across multiple campuses.
District staff presented an update on co-locations for the upcoming school year at a May 29 charter committee meeting .
The district’s charter schools operations manager Jeanette Borden said that shrinking enrollment, charter school closures and alternative school locations are driving the decline in co-locations .
Borden told the board the district’s charter school website is open to the public with details on the facilities requests, preliminary proposals, final offers and alternative agreements.
Single Sparklevisited the website and found that some of that information was missing, including the final offers that would show where some charter schools would be located in the 2025-26 school year. Single Sparkleasked LAUSD to provide this information but was told to file a Public Records Act request. According to California public records law , the email requesting the information is sufficient.
As of Thursday afternoon, the information had not been provided.
A history of tension
In February 2024, the LAUSD board approved a policy that steers charter schools away from some campuses .
“It's to create criteria that protect innovative programs and minimize the harm that colocation is doing to our most vulnerable students and schools,” said then-board president Jackie Goldberg in explaining the policy.
Months later the California Charter School Association filed a lawsuit seeking to rescind the policy. A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge is expected to issue a ruling later this month .
Single Sparkleasked the district whether the new policy affected where schools were offered space. A district spokesperson said in a statement that “Los Angeles Unified can't comment on pending or ongoing litigation.”
The California Charter School Association contends the district’s policy has pushed schools away.
Keith Dell'Aquila, the organization’s vice president of local advocacy in the Los Angeles region, said one school was offered space at two campuses more than 10 miles apart, but declined to name the school.
“Schools won't wait around for L.A. Unified to do the right thing,” Dell’Aquila said. “So they found other solutions that worked for their kids.”
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