Tim Deroche:

It’s the feel-good story of the year for the Los Angeles Unified School District campuses. L.A. Unified recently broke 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.

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Madison expanded its least diverse schools recently as well; Van Hise and Hamilton…