This Tuesday, Los Angeles Unified School District board members will vote on a policy known as co-location, which places charter schools on the campuses of existing traditional public schools. The issue has created tension — for decades — between advocates for both school systems.
The policy stems from Proposition 39, passed by California voters in 2000, which requires districts to give public charter school students equitable access to facility space.
The proposed resolution is co-authored by LAUSD school board president Jackie Goldberg and school board member Rocio Rivas. They say it would mitigate the negative impacts of co-location.
The district’s current co-location policy forces traditional public schools to hand over classrooms classified as empty by state law, and share their libraries, playgrounds, and cafeterias with charter schools.
Under Prop 39, South LA College Prep, a charter high school, moved onto Bret Harte Preparatory Middle School’s campus this academic year. South LA Prep Principal Allyson Wright came in treading lightly.
“One thing that I was really clear with my team is this is Harte Prep first,” she sats. “We’re functioning here, but I wanted to make sure that they knew that we were here as guests.”
Harte Prep Principal Magan Mitchell declined an interview request, but Wright says they meet weekly – and that, so far, it’s been easy to collaborate with the traditional public school. “I feel like we're proving what can be possible when a co-location is done really well,” she says.
But there are signs that teachers at the traditional middle school don’t feel the same.
In May, a petition started circulating to stop South LA College Prep from moving onto the Harte Prep Middle School campus. It got 328 signatures. The following month, a handful of Harte Prep teachers showed up to a meeting where the charter school’s board voted to co-locate the schools.
“Be ready,” a teacher called out, after the vote. “It’s not going to be easy.”
The proposed policy directs LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho to avoid future co-locations on certain campuses. They include community schools, schools identified by the district as high-priority because of low academic achievement, and schools that are part of the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP).
“The district is making investments [in these schools],” says Rivas. “When the charter school co-locates, it really limits the space to really grow these programs.”
Harte Prep is both a district priority school and a BSAP school, but South LA College Prep will not have to move, at least this year.
At a committee meeting ahead of the vote, board president Goldberg said that if passed, the policy would only affect new co-locations, and not existing ones. Changes include, but are not limited to, “insufficient space, addition of grade levels, and other material changes to the charter,” according to the policy.
The California Charter School Association (CCSA) has come out strongly against the resolution, and says it will take legal action if the district passes it.
Keith Dell’Aquila, CCSA’s vice president of local advocacy, acknowledges that co-locations can be challenging, but says the policy misses the point.
“What it ought to be focused on – and it doesn't touch at all is – how do we reduce the need for sharing space in the first place?” says Dell’Aquila. “And number two, when it does make sense to share space – and it does in some cases – how do we make that process easier and better for all teachers, all kids, all schools involved?”
Dell’Aquila argues that nothing in state law requires co-location, and that the district could relieve the pressures of co-location by having charter schools share space with each other, or by using state bond money to build new facilities for charters.
There are currently 272 charter schools in LAUSD, according to the district’s Charter Schools Division. Charter and traditional public schools are co-located across 50 campuses in the district, and about 20 of those co-locations are currently at traditional public school sites identified by the district as community schools, priority schools, and BSAP schools.