Neighborhood-Centered Joint-Use Schools

As school districts across the densely populated Southland have embarked on the enormous task of building hundreds of new schools, conflicts over land and community services have been inevitable. New Schools Better Neighborhoods, a nonprofit organization funded by First 5 LA, is one group trying to broker agreements between school interests and other community needs.

Journalist Howard Blume, writing in The Planning Report, tells the story of a conflict between housing and a new school in one community:

"An impoverished, tightly crowded neighborhood near Downtown Los Angeles was bracing for a collision of powerful, opposing forces that wanted the same small piece of land. On one side was a builder of affordable housing... On the other side was the Los Angeles Unified School District, which wanted to build a school, one of 160 planned throughout the district to relieve unconscionable overcrowding."