Los Angeles Attacks Charter Schools

livemint.com:

Enrollment is declining in union-run public schools across the country, and Los Angeles lost about 7.6% of its K-12 students from 2020-21 to 2022-23. Yet the teachers union and its allies in the city are mounting an effort to restrict charter schools from using empty space in district schools. California law requires school districts to make space available to charter students through “co-location." This lets charters reach agreements to use classrooms and other space in district school buildings.

But the Los Angeles Unified School District school board voted 4-2 last week to direct the district superintendent to come up with a policy to “avoid" co-locations at certain district schools. The policy would mean nearly 350 schools out of more than 700 in the district won’t have to share space with charters. The schools exempted are political choices: “community schools" that provide additional support services, schools that enroll a certain number of black students, and “priority schools" that are low-performing or have low-income students.

Some 75% of current charter co-locations are in such schools—and education options like charters are most needed in the communities with these schools. One of the board members who put forward the resolution, Rocio Rivas, was backed by the teachers union when she ran for election last year and made co-location a campaign issue. “When a charter school is co-locating on a traditional public school campus, it’s like a cancer that comes in and then metastasizes and spreads because you’re not controlling it," she told the left-wing Jacobin magazine.