Judge indecisive on legality of LA schools campus-sharing policy

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Los Angeles Superior Court Judge, on Monday, said he was still undecided on whether or not the LA Unified School District’s policy limiting charter schools from sharing campuses with district schools is legal.

His decision could turn on the definition of the word “avoid.”

Last year, the school district’s Board of Education enacted a new policy, that would “avoid” charter school colocation at 346 campuses, nearly half of them in the district.

In a tentative ruling, Superior Court Judge Stephen Goorvitch wrote that he thought the word “avoid” was a bit like the word “prohibit” — that is, those 346 campuses were off limits for sharing. But school district attorney David Huff insisted otherwise.

“These are guidelines, your honor,” Huff told the judge. “Not mandates. Not prohibitions. Nothing categorical.” He added later: “This is not about prohibiting colocations.”

“Discouraging?” a skeptical Goorvich asked. “How about avoiding?”

“This is a misunderstanding,” Huff said.

“The policy said ‘avoid,’” Goorvitch said.

Charter schools are public schools funded with taxpayer money but exempt from some of the rules and regulations that normal public schools must adhere to. They may, for example, hire non-union teachers or have their students wear school uniforms.

In Los Angeles, there are roughly 272 charter schools serving about 150,000 kids — about 10% of students in LAUSD, the nation’s second largest school district.

The existence of charters schools has always been a divisive political issue. Opponents — particularly the teachers union — argue that charter schools increase school segregation and drain the kids with the most active and attentive parents away from normal district schools.

Proponents say that charters drive innovation, serving as competition for neighborhood schools, and that they give parents more choices over where to send their children to be educated.

Among the most controversial aspects of charter schools is the issue of colocation. Building a new campus is hugely expensive, and takes years. The school district, meanwhile, has experienced declining enrollment for decades, with hundreds of thousands fewer students than years ago.

The 1992 state law that created charter schools entitles them “to use, at no charge, facilities not currently being used by the school district for instructional or administrative purposes, or that have not been historically used for rental purposes.”

In 2000, voters passed Proposition 39, which further clarified that charter schools were entitled to an equal share of available space as regular neighborhood schools.

The LAUSD school board has, at times — depending on its ever-shifting political balance — has tried to push back on Proposition 39, and limit the amount of campus space that charter schools can apply to use.

In February 2024, the board passed, by a narrow 4-3 vote, a teachers union-backed resolution that would “avoid” campus sharing in certain circumstances — for example, between high schools and elementary schools — and at certain campuses, including those that have designated programs to help Black students, schools with low test scores and “community schools,” which offer services to surrounding community beyond education.

The Charter Schools Association sued, charging that the new policy cut against Proposition 39.

Though Goorvitch denied a preliminary injunction to the Charter School Association in October and said then he didn’t think the policy was illegal, he seemed to have changed his mind by Monday, given his his tentative ruling.

He wrote that while the policy was legal as to its consideration of “safety factors” — i.e., avoiding older kids sharing a schoolyard with younger kids — the other provisions “violate the purpose of Proposition 39, which is to treat district and charter schools equally with respect to the allocation of space.”

During the hearing, he said he found the policy vague.

“There are things this policy could have said that would’ve made a difference,” Goorvitch said.

“This is not about denying colocations. This is about identifying, here’s a guideline, here’s a priority, that staff must use to decide where to locate a charter school,” Huff, a partner at Orbach Huff & Henderson, said.

When asked if the 346 schools were “off the table” for campus-sharing, Huff insisted they were not.

He pointed to a clause in the policy that the campuses should be avoided only when “operationally feasible and permitted by law.”  The argument appeared to sway the judge, somewhat, and Goorvitch said a number of times that he hadn’t made up his mind and that the decision was “a close call.”

Winston Stromberg, a partner at Latham & Watkins representing the Charter Schools Association, tried to convince the judge to stick with his tentative ruling.

“I think what the district is doing here, they are saying these particular schools are off-limits for charter schools,” Stromberg said. Avoid and prohibit, he argued, were “nearly identical terms.”

“They’re not allowed to prioritize their students,” Stromberg said.

When the judge pointed out that even if they lost the case, individual charter schools could still file lawsuits if they felt their requests for campus space had been unfairly rejected, Stromberg said having to do so would “put a huge burden on individual charter schools,” since those suits are long and costly.

The judge took the arguments under submission, and said he would issue a ruling within 30 days. He also said that even if he sided with the charter schools, the school board could easily amend the resolution to clarify that it was less about prohibiting the sharing of certain campuses, and more about prioritizing which ones would be shared.

“I think this can be fixed,” Goorvitch said. “This may end up being a narrow and temporary victory for the petitioner.”

Given that, he suggested the two sides think about resolving the case on their own.

“If following this hearing your various clients talk and you decide there is some way to rewrite the policy so that everyone’s happy, let us know,” Goorvitch said with a wry smile. The suggestion appeared to be met with little enthusiasm.

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