After a series of recent losses, the charter sector in Los Angeles claimed a clear win in June when a California State Superior Court judge struck down a Los Angeles Unified policy banning charters from using classrooms at roughly a third of the city’s schools.

The policy, which went into effect this year over heated opposition and after a series of contentious board meetings, barred charters from using nearly 346 LAUSD campuses, out of about 1,000. 

Proponents of the rule – including the majority of the school board – argued it would protect schools with programs for Black students, low performing “priority” schools, and community schools with social services.

But the California Charter Schools Association said it unfairly blocked one in five students – those who attend charters – from using LAUSD’s schools. CCSA took its opposition to court, arguing that the rule violated a state law to provide charters with classrooms at district campuses.   

The CCSA won, but L.A.’s charter movement must still confront a potentially hostile LAUSD board and headwinds faced by many schools in L.A. and other big American cities – including declining enrollment, squeezed budgets and federal government immigration enforcement.

“It’s a victory, not just for charter schools, but for public school families across the district,” said Keith Dell’Aquila, who is vice president, Greater Los Angeles local advocacy for the CCSA.

is just one of several times it has prevailed over LA Unified in court over policy overreach, Dell’Aquila said.  

“It means you cannot privilege one group of students over another simply based off of where, or which model of public school their families have chosen to attend,” he said.  

Still, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Stephen I. Goorvitch upheld portions of the district policy’s charter colocation policy in his decision, allowing LAUSD to restrict charters from school buildings on the basis of capacity or safety issues.

The ruling still gives LAUSD latitude on where to allow charter schools to operate, a point district officials focused on in their statement on the ruling.

“We are very pleased with most aspects of the court’s ruling, which denied all of CCSA’s contentions aside from two lines in the policy,” reads LAUSD’s statement, adding: “CCSA significantly mischaracterizes the plain language of both the policy and … ruling.”

LAUSD officials said the district has “carefully reviewed the court’s ruling and is evaluating all available options” – but reps for LA Unified wouldn’t say if the district would appeal the decision.

“We remain firmly committed to serving the best interests of all students in our school communities while continuing to meet our legal obligations,” concluded the district’s statement.

L.A. Unified has 235 charter schools, more than any other U.S. school system. L.A.’s charter schools outperform the city’s schools and enroll high numbers of poor students and students of color.

State law gives charter schools across California the right to public school classroom spaces that are “reasonably equivalent” to those offered to other public schools. 

But charters have waged legal battles against the district for years, just to gain access to classrooms, Dell’Aquila said. He hopes CCSA’s latest win is decisive, but he’s not confident it will be. 

Charter schools now command a record 22% of the district’s enrollment, Dell’Aquila said, giving them a bigger slice of the city than any other large U.S. district. Charter schools in L.A. are losing students like schools across the U.S., he said, but LA Unified is losing kids faster.

And the district just lost an important legal battle with the charter sector.

Judge Goorvitch concluded in that the LA Unified policy, which the Board of Education approved with a one-vote majority in 2024, “prioritizes District schools over charter schools and is too vague.”

How the district will respond now is largely up to the board. So far, its members aren’t talking.

A spokesman for LAUSD Board Member Rocio Rivas, who co-authored the policy, referred a request for comment to LAUSD and declined to make Rivas available for an interview.

LAUSD Board President Scott Schmerelson didn’t respond to requests for comment on the ruling.

Reps for , the powerful local teachers’ union that backed the campaigns of Rivas and Schmerelson, and also supported the colocation policy that was just struck down, also didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Morgan Polikoff a professor of education at USC Rossier, said the win could put some wind in the sails of the L.A.’s once mighty-yet-still-massive charter school sector, a national model for charters which has been under fire for years, and yet retains its relevance.

He questioned the need for the policy at a time when LAUSD enrollments have shrunk drastically leaving empty and underused classrooms. Enrollment in LA Unified fell to around 400,000 kids this year, down from a peak of nearly 750,000 students in 2002.

LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and board president Schmerelson have each suggested some schools might have to be closed if the trend isn’t reversed.

Some estimates put the district at about 40% under capacity in terms of building utilization, but LAUSD doesn’t have an official reckoning.

So why is the district trying to throttle charter schools when it has classroom space to spare? It’s about money, said Polikoff.

District and charter schools are both funded by the state on a per-pupil basis. Shrinking enrollments mean shrinking school budgets. The district is trying to retain marketshare, he explained.

“The district had basically walled off about a third of their campuses, sort of ironically, the kinds of campuses serving the students who are most likely to enroll in charter schools, said Polikoff, “Maybe not ironically, probably intentionally.”

The number of LAUSD schools sharing space with charters has dropped by nearly half in the last seven years, according to documents presented at the LAUSD board’s charter committee in May.

Enrollment in the district overall is down about 45% from its peak more than two decades ago, Polikoff pointed out,

“If the policy had had stuck, the district would have had a bit of a guardrail to protect enrollment declines in some of its campuses. And now that isn’t there anymore,” he said.  

“Both sectors are struggling, right? And that, I think, is a story of demographic trends in the city.”

Falling enrollment means fewer charter schools have to share space with district-run public schools.

This coming school year, 41 LAUSD schools will house an independently run charter school on their campus, down from 72 in 2018. In the 2017–2018 school year LAUSD provided nearly 23,000 seats for charter kids, it’ll provide about 9,000 in-district seats this year.

With fewer kids from charter schools in district schools, and enrollment dropping and empty classrooms growing across LAUSD, there ought to be less conflict now between district and charters, said Yvette King-Berg, executive director of Youth Policy Institute Charter Schools, which enrolls about 850 students across three schools in L.A.

King-Berg, who serves on CCSA’s board and has four decades of experience working LAUSD and Pasadena schools, said the ruling “moves us back to what’s reasonable.” Issues such as declining enrollments, dropping attendance due to immigration enforcement and falling budgets are common to all LAUSD public schools, she said. 

“Taxpayers paid for these school buildings, and if all the taxpayers’ funds are flowing equally for all kids, we shouldn’t be pushing any group of kids out,” said King-Berg. “So it’s my hope that we can find a way now which is a little bit more fair.” 

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the court that struck down Los Angeles Unified’s policy banning charters from using classrooms. The judge was from the California State Superior Court. The article also incorrectly identified the institution where Yvette King-Berg works. She is the executive director of Youth Policy Institute Charter Schools.

Between 2006 and 2020, 1.4% of schools with a grant from the Charter Schools Program closed, compared to 2.3% of schools without the funding. And within 12 years, schools with a grant were about half as likely to close as those without one. 

But echoing the results of on the program, the Government Accountability Office found that states awarded about $152 million in grants to 638 charter schools that closed or never opened — representing about 14% of those that received grants. 

Even so, charter school supporters welcomed the GAO’s main takeaway.

“This finding only underscores the need to increase funding for the [Charter Schools Program] so that more charter schools have access to start-up funds and planning grants,” said Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. 

The report is the latest to respond to questions from policymakers about the program’s effectiveness as the Biden administration moves to implement tighter rules for grantees. Charter supporters argue the updated regulations, which seek to create more racially balanced schools and increase transparency, would limit growth. But critics say grant recipients waste taxpayer dollars when they close or never open. asked for both the GAO report and an earlier one from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General. 

The Inspector General found that charter operators opened about half of the schools that they promised. Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, wrote in an that the report also drew attention to “sloppy record keeping and weak oversight” of the program. 

The GAO focused on the sustainability of schools that opened, comparing similar schools that received grants with those that did not. 

It found that the pattern of grant-receiving schools remaining open longer was consistent regardless of grade levels and student poverty and whether the schools were urban, suburban or rural. The results also held true in the three states that received the most funding from the program — California, Florida and Texas.

California saw a more dramatic spike in schools closing after nine years if they didn’t receive a grant. Ana Tintocalis, spokeswoman for the California Charter School Association, attributed the difference to additional quality measures that grant recipients must meet to receive funding. 

Increased closure rates, she added, also likely stem from demographic shifts and the high cost of living and working in the state. 

“The biggest reasons for closures across the state tend to be difficulty securing facilities and low enrollment, which impact our urban schools the most,” she said.

When GAO researchers interviewed officials in seven states, they found financial mismanagement and a lack of community support were also among the top reasons why charter schools close, whether or not they receive a federal grant.

A year ago, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers released highlighting how states have used grant funds to support school districts, mayor’s offices, nonprofits and other institutions that approve and renew charter school applications. 

Karega Rausch, president and CEO of the organization, said the GAO’s report reflects“meaningful changes” in policies since then that have “led to increased accountability.” 

In some cases, that means stopping a planned charter from opening,” he said, and “closing an existing charter school that doesn’t live up to their promises to students, communities and taxpayers.”