A descriptive study of the “hardware” of education: the relationship between zoning and schoolsites in the Los Angeles Unified School District

The two most important services provided by local governments are education and land use controls i.e., zoning. In general, the legal authority to ensure education is vested under state law whereas zoning laws are derived from municipal legal authority, and so zoning laws do not apply directly to school districts. However, zoning impacts education indirectly but crucially because it strongly influences the student composition at schoolsites. This impact is not benign and often the result of exclusionary zoning. Exclusionary zoning, anti-density zoning in particular, operates to exclude perceived undesirables, which include minorities and socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals. Instead, exclusionary zoning systematically channels perceived undesirables into particular geographic areas, typically away from affluent White residential neighborhoods. This herding effect of exclusionary zoning has a tendency to restrict the access of minority and socially disadvantaged students to high-quality schools. Thus, exclusionary zoning imperils codified California policy that all students have a right to equal education and equitable access to education. The purpose of this descriptive study was to investigate the relationship between zoning and schoolsites in the LAUSD. In particular, the study looked at the zoning of schoolsites and characteristics of the population served by the LAUSD and characteristics of the local governments where LAUSD schoolsites were found. Though results from this study did not unequivocally confirm the presence of exclusionary zoning throughout the LAUSD, several results aligned with features consistent with exclusionary zoning, including the presence of political fragmentation, neighborhood units, anti-density zoning regimes, and “secession of the successful”. Results also reveal numerous lines of inquiry for future research.