Credit: Julie Leopo/EdSource
The Los Angeles Unified School District school board drew a mix of gratitude and frustration from communities throughout the region during its discussion of a policy that prevents charter schools from sharing a campus with its 100 priority schools, Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP) schools and community schools. The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), along with charter supporters, said the board policy was discriminatory and threatened lawsuits against the district.
Borrowing from a previous resolution, the proposed new policy encourages the district to avoid co-location offers that “compromise district schools’ capacity to serve neighborhood children” and that “result in grade span arrangements that negatively impact student safety and build charter school pipelines that actively deter students from attending District schools.”
The policy would come into play when the district evaluates new charter schools, when charters request different or new sites or when “existing conditions change for reasons including, but not limited to, insufficient space, addition of grade levels, and other material revisions.”
LAUSD’s school board directed Superintendent Alberto Carvalho to develop such a policy through a resolution passed last September, and the board is slated to vote on it in February.
The goal of the resolution, according to board President and resolution author Jackie Goldberg, is not to undo anything — but instead, to prioritize the needs of district students who are more vulnerable. She cited hostility on campuses and challenges with sharing spaces, including those used for enrichment activities and basic needs support.
“We’re on the right path to get past, shall we say, discomforts and disagreements on what it means to have a charter school on a campus,” said school board member George McKenna during Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole Meeting.
“Everyone may not be satisfied all the time, but I think the guidelines are a great opportunity.”
Charter supporters, however, have claimed that the policy discriminates against roughly 11,000 charter students by closing off roughly 346 district campuses. These restrictions, they say, could lead to more school closures and instances where schools are split between various locations — leading to longer commutes and accessibility issues for disadvantaged students.
“If the board adopts the proposed policy presented today, CCSA will be left with few remaining options but to, yet again, meet LAUSD in court and enforce the rights of charter school students,” said the organization’s CEO and president, Myrna Castrejón.
Co-locations in LAUSD
As a result of Proposition 39 — a statewide initiative — public school districts throughout California are required to share space with charter schools.
While there are several ways for districts to share space with charters — such as pursuing private sites or long-term leases — LAUSD has opted for years to co-locate its campuses, meaning that both a regular public school and a charter school share one campus.
“What we have at play here in Los Angeles is very unusual. … We know how we got here, so we have a golden opportunity here to fix it, to make it better,” said district Superintendent Alberto Carvalho at Tuesday’s meeting. He added that the district should be “vigilant and honest about unintended consequences of well-intentioned policies.”
To secure a space, charters request facilities from LAUSD. The district then evaluates the request and comes back with a preliminary offer by Feb. 1 every year.
Charters are given a month to respond, after which the district has until April 1 to finalize the offer.
Currently, there are 50 co-located charters across the district spanning 52 sites. About 21 charters are located on sites that would be protected under the new policy.
While the proposed co-location policy has not yet been approved, several district officials said during Tuesday’s meeting that the proposed guidelines were considered when making this year’s offers.
And of the 13 new requests from charters this year, only two offers will likely be made on the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan, community and priority schools. Meanwhile, the district did not have an estimate on the number of charters that failed to receive an offer on their requested campus.
“Co-location is one of many ways to deal with the legal obligation to share space and our moral obligation to make sure kids are treated equally; and, we have a myopic focus on these co-locations, which are really difficult even in the best-case scenarios,” said school board member Nick Melvoin on Tuesday.
“This district, LA Unified, traditional schools, has lost a couple hundred thousand kids in 20 years. We definitely have enough space for everyone. We just don’t allocate it properly.”
In fact, as the district experiences declining enrollment because of larger demographic shifts — in both non-charters and charters — the number of facilities requests and co-location offers has also declined.
Specifically, over the past five years, Castrejón said charter schools’ need for space has gone down by more than 50%.
Instead of focusing on solutions, Melvoin claimed both charter supporters and opponents have attempted to “articulate the pain for political gain on one side or the other.”
“I remain disappointed in the unwillingness to actually try and solve this,” he said.
Support for the policy
The policy’s supporters have repeatedly emphasized that avoiding co-locations on Black Student Achievement Plan, community and priority schools is critical to promoting equity and protecting the district’s more vulnerable students.
“That’s not a political issue, that’s an issue of equity,” Goldberg said.
“An issue of equity says that the schools that are struggling the most to educate our students should not be given continuously more things to do, like figure out a bell schedule and how to share the cafeteria and how to share the playground and how to share the bathrooms. … That’s an additional burden on everybody on that school, really on both sides.”
Goldberg added that in order to avoid co-locations on vulnerable campuses, the district will need to reevaluate their definition of a “reasonable distance.”
Members of United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing district teachers, have historically sided with the district on matters concerning charters and have voiced support for September’s resolution.
“It’s been months since the School Board passed the resolution on co-locations, but we have schools that are in the process of losing valuable classroom and learning space. Without action, there are schools that will soon have to hold counseling sessions on the playground, or will lose their computer lab,” reads a Facebook post from the union.
“Enough is enough. LAUSD needs to stand by its own resolution and protect our amazing programs.”
Yolanda Tamayo, a teachers union leader from the East Area, said during public comment that Lorena Street Elementary, where she teaches, used to be co-located with a charter.
During that time, 10 years ago, the school allegedly “endured the dismantling of our computer lab, lost a full-time use of our library, auditorium, eating area, yard, plus the gutting of our important resources that our school desperately needed back then and now.”
Another speaker, who teaches at an LAUSD community school, said he fears his campus could be co-located with a charter, which he believes would cost them space used to house clothes for students in need and preclude them from opening a health center and food pantry.
Concerns from charters
Supporters of charter schools have claimed, however, that the policy discriminates against charter students and could lead to “charter deserts,” harming students from marginalized communities, who make up the bulk of charter students, according to Castrejón, the CCSA president.
“Charter schools do pay a fee for the use of district facilities,” Castrejón said, noting that several at-risk charters are also community schools. “The cost of going to an open market in a place that is as overbuilt and as expensive as Los Angeles could actually … result in some school closures if Prop. 39 co-location is not made available.”
Another potential impact of the policy is an increase in multi-site offers, where charters are split across multiple LAUSD campuses, which would force families to weigh what is feasible against what they feel is right for their children, according to Keith Dell’Aquila, CCSA Greater Los Angeles local’s vice president.
Dell’Aquila added that split schools also lead to longer commutes and accessibility challenges for lower-income families.
“You may see a charter school forcibly relocated by the district that forces a family to make a choice: Are you the type of family who can travel across Los Angeles, can travel 45 minutes, has access to private transportation to get your family to that car or not?”
Split campuses also pose challenges for school communities, he emphasized.
“You start to look at a school that has to do more with less with their budget, and they’ve got to have two administrators across two different sites. They’ve got to make programs work, you’ve got to make teacher [professional development] work,” Dell’Aquila said.
“You have a divided school culture. We’ve talked to every one of our schools who has experienced this split site offer and have said, ‘yeah, life is harder across the board.’”
While they cannot fully anticipate how the policy will be implemented and its effects, CCSA sent a letter to LAUSD’s school board Monday evening addressing several of their concerns with the policy, ranging from the alleged limits placed on charter school growth to the district allegedly ignoring the intent of Proposition 39.
The letter also threatens legal action if the board adopts the policy.
“A public school policy is a promise you are making to the public,” said Shawna Draxton, who has served as an educator in both regular Los Angeles public schools and charters for more than 25 years, during public comment Tuesday.
“My students are watching. They admire you; they care about civics; they’ve been to these meetings. And whether or not they agree with your decisions, they are looking to you to be courageous leaders.”
Editors’ note: This story has been updated to add a statement from UTLA.