Why is LAUSD spending $70 million to boost capacity at a school in Silver Lake, when nearby schools have thousands of empty seats?

It’s the feel-good story of the year for the Los Angeles Unified School district campuses. L.A. .Unified recently broken ground on a beautiful new $70 million renovation of Ivanhoe Elementary in Silver Lake, adding a shiny new building that will boost permanent capacity at the school.

Ivanhoe is one of the shining stars of LAUSD with over 80% of the children reading at grade level. In an era of rapidly declining enrollment across L.A., Ivanhoe has bucked the trend, showing a 31% increase in enrollment from 2009 to 2019. It sounds like that rarest of birds: the public school success story.

But there was no need for this project. There are six other elementary schools in the neighborhood that are literally half-empty. These schools — Allesandro, Atwater Avenue, Clifford Street, Franklin Avenue, Mayberry Street and Micheltorena — once educated 3,215 elementary school students. But their enrollment in 2023-24 was just 1,642. All of these schools are less than 10 minutes from Ivanhoe.

The district could have saved that $70 million in taxpayer money by simply opening up those other schools to the Ivanhoe families.

But that wasn’t politically possible. Why? Ivanhoe is a coveted school, and parents have often paid a significant premium to live in the attendance zone and be assured of a spot in Ivanhoe. Tanya Anton, a public school admissions consultant and author of the GoMamaGuide to Los Angeles schools, has said that parents will often spend up to $300,000 extra for a home that is within the zone of a coveted public school like Ivanhoe. These parents often feel that they have already “paid for” their child’s “free” public school via their hefty mortgage.

As a result, Ivanhoe parents are much wealthier than most LAUSD parents — only 14% of Ivanhoe’s students are low-income — and they have the ear of the board. Ivanhoe is also one of a handful of LAUSD elementary schools that are majority White.

What’s most disturbing is that the attendance zone reflects decades of discrimination in the neighborhood. My organization has published a map showing that the attendance zone for Ivanhoe mirrors the racist redlining map of the same neighborhood from 1939. It covers almost all of the area deemed “desirable” back in 1939, and it excludes all the areas of town that (both then and now) have significant concentrations of low-income families of color.

The attendance zone for Ivanhoe is doing the same work that the redlining map did back in the 1930s: It’s boxing out low-income families.

It’s important to note that this isn’t just an accident of history. You can see it in the district’s Open Enrollment numbers. Every year, each school is required by state law to report how many open seats they have for kids who live outside their attendance zone, and the district publishes that list for parents.

After years of growth, Ivanhoe has experienced a downtick in students since the pandemic, and its enrollment has fallen from 467 to 432. So the school should have at least 35 available seats. But, in the most recent list published in July, Ivanhoe didn’t report a single seat available to families outside the zone.

This is educational redlining. And it’s not just an Ivanhoe problem. Look at Franklin Avenue Elementary, another majority-White school that has seen enrollment decline by 24% since 2005. At least 129 seats should be available at Franklin Avenue. But the low-income kids who live minutes away in East Hollywood or Echo Park just aren’t welcome at Franklin Avenue or at Ivanhoe.

That wasted $70 million is a wake-up call for Los Angeles families. The best public schools in LA are not truly open to the public.

Tim DeRoche is the founder and president of Available to All, a nonpartisan watchdog that defends equal access to public schools.