Five years after COVID-19 shut down all the schools in Los Angeles, enrollment declines in the nation’s second largest district are worsening again.
Since the pandemic, the Los Angeles Unified School District has lost more than 70,000 students. Enrollment has fallen to 408,083, from a peak of 746,831 in 2002. Losses steepened this year, too, with the district shedding more than 11,000 kids.
Nearly half of the district’s 456 zoned elementary schools — 225 campuses — are half-full or worse, and 56 have seen rosters fall by 70% or more, according to a new analysis of more than 30 years of local attendance data.
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Decades of shrinking classes recently prompted L.A. school board president Scott Schmerelson to say district leadership needs to start talking about closing or combining schools, something that some other big U.S. cities are already doing.
But LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho said in an interview with The 74 he’s pumping the brakes on closing or consolidating schools, a tactic that often sparks protests in impacted neighborhoods.
Instead, Carvalho said, he’s starting with a fresh idea for how to solve some of the problems associated with dwindling admissions in LAUSD, one that he said may also stave off a financial crisis for the district caused by falling per-pupil funding.
He believes the L.A. Unified can fight the financial losses that could force it to close or consolidate schools by shutting down underutilized buildings on multi-building campuses or unused portions of individual school buildings, while keeping other parts operational.
“When you close a school, it may very well extinguish the only protective area in a community for kids,” Carvalho said of his motivations for avoiding — at almost any cost — school closures, even amid demographic changes and shifting enrollment patterns.
If L.A. Unified can consolidate its shrinking schools into a fraction of the classrooms or buildings, Carvalho explained, it could save on staffing and facilities costs that could otherwise force the district into closing schools.
“You close buildings that are either not up to par or are underutilized within those schools, prior to a conversation regarding the closure of the school itself,” he said.
That’s because, Carvalho said, when a school is closed, students still have to go somewhere; and staffing levels set by union contracts will prevent the district from shedding too many teachers.
“So what do you save on? You save, basically, on the maintenance of that school,” he said, plus the salaries of principals and a few other staffers.
“The savings,” he concluded, “are not what people think.”
L.A. Unified is starting with a plan to survey its schools to see where unused space exists, Carvalho said. After that, a process will be created to close or employ unused classrooms in other ways. He didn’t offer examples, but other districts have embedded child care centers or afterschool programs in empty classrooms.
But Carvalho faces pressure to act from a school board that’s concerned with the district’s increasingly dire loss of students.
Schmerelson, the board’s term-limited president, pushed the issue closer to the forefront earlier this year when he said that the district needs to consider consolidating or closing schools.
Since LAUSD is funded on a per-pupil basis from local, state and federal sources, Schmerelson said, the loss of students directly threatens the fiscal health of the district at a time when pandemic-era federal relief funding has dried up.
“We’re going to have to fasten our seat belts and endure this ride,” Schmerelson said in an interview this winter.
Just as important as the financial pressures, Schmerelson explained, are the social and academic ones.
Under-enrolled schools can’t provide a robust education, he said, since there aren’t enough kids to fill up classrooms and float basic programs such as sports teams or a science club.
And with fewer kids to go around, more Los Angeles schools are failing to attract enough students to hit such a threshold, a number that is often pegged at about 200 kids for traditional public schools in an urban district like L.A.
What to do when schools shrink beyond the point of viability is a thorny problem for LAUSD. But now, a study published this month by a watchdog group has offered a fresh look at the challenge.
“Crisis in the School House,” a 36-page report published by Available To All, a nonpartisan nonprofit led by Tim DeRoche, an author and parent who lives in Los Angeles, draws on official attendance data for LAUSD’s zoned elementary schools for the years 1995 to 2024.
DeRoche’s investigation of LAUSD produced some startling conclusions.
“The district is shrinking dramatically,” said DeRoche, who, among other things, wrote a book on the history of U.S. school attendance zones.
Most zoned L.A. elementary schools are almost half empty, and many are operating at less than 25% capacity, DeRoche said.
Enrollment has dropped by more than 46%, he added, leaving more than 160,000 empty seats. Thirty-four schools have fewer than 200 students enrolled; a dozen of those schools once had enrollment over 400.
Enrollment in LAUSD Elementary Schools has dropped 46% in the last 20 years. Source: California Department of Education (Available To All)
DeRoche said the steepest drops tended to be in poorer neighborhoods and lower performing schools, while higher performing schools retained more students.
He said tactics, such as the one proposed by Carvalho to limit campus usage, could make a difference to preserve programs, but ultimately LAUSD will have to reckon with the financial problems posed by surplus seats.
“Districts around the country are going to be facing these financial crises, and the potential closure of schools,” DeRoche warned. “In L.A. that is a dramatic problem that cuts across every neighborhood of the city.”
Drops in per-pupil funding combined with persistent overhead will put the squeeze on LAUSD, he said, just as falling admissions have forced other school systems to make tough decisions.
A list of Westside & Central LA Schools with 50% enrollment declines or more (Available to All)
More districts in other cities and states are starting a process of closing or combining schools after enrollments that cratered in the pandemic failed to bounce back.
Results with school closures have been mixed.
New York City, faced with excess capacity and enrollment declines like L.A., has already combined some of its tiny schools, and so far managed to avoid huge public outcry. School closures in Denver and Chicago have been a painful business.
Tanya Ortiz Franklin, who represents neighborhoods in L.A. including Watts and San Pedro, is another member of the LAUSD board who is calling for a plan to combine or close the city’s underused schools.
“It doesn’t make sense to keep the same number of campuses when costs of everything are increasing,” she explained.
“And yet,” Franklin added, “that is a very hard conversation to have with community members who are afraid of losing their neighborhood school.”
Still, she said the district ought to start having those tough talks about closing schools soon, to maximize chances of successfully managing properties while continuing to serve the needs of families.
The possibilities the board member sees are myriad. Some school buildings might even be best put to use, she said, by serving as housing for teachers. But first the district has to talk to families and analyze the data to find out what neighborhoods really need.
“We could be using our properties in different ways,” Franklin said, “that still contribute to the vibrancy and the needs of the community.”