The Inglewood school district is set to regain control of its local public schools next year — after the longest state takeover of a school system in California history, officials announced Thursday.
Inglewood Unified was beset by financial crisis and low academic achievement when the state took control in 2012 as a condition of a $29 million emergency loan to keep the school system afloat. The receivership touched off a painful community journey that brought on job reductions, layoffs and school closures as enrollment sharply declined.
Although financial collapse was averted, the troubles that contributed to the receivership were exacerbated over the years by leadership instability — with 11 appointed leaders over an 11-year span. Austerity measures that included comparatively low salaries contributed to staff turnover and hiring challenges.
Nearly 14 years after the state takeover began the Inglewood Unified School District will soon be run by locally elected board members and a superintendent of their choosing.
Mae Wood, a retired Inglewood Unified teacher and has lived in the community for more than 30 years, reflected on district progress after the announcement.
“The district has built from the ground up again” she said. “So there was a lot of changes, but the changes I see now are changes that will benefit our children.”
Indeed, much has changed during these years in Inglewood, which has become a world-class sports and entertainment venue, home to So-Fi Stadium and the Rams, and Intuit Dome and the Clippers. Historically, a working- and middle-class, substantially Black community, the city saw an influx of Latino families and then in more recent years, neighborhoods have gentrified, with many older homeowners remaining in place and many young families priced out.
The countdown to the school district’s own transformation is underway. Barring political or legal intervention, local control can return when required performance parameters are positive for more than a year. The county has a primary role in making the decision, with oversight from the state superintendent of public instruction and the head of the state board of education.
In an interview, county education office Supt. Debra Duardo noted that an independent evaluation team credited the district with meeting 153 standards in key areas: student achievement; community relations and governance; and management of finances, personnel and facilities.
“It is a huge accomplishment,” Duardo said. “They’ve never been able to meet these standards that are very rigorous.”
“They’re very, very close to getting there, and we want to celebrate,” she said.
To critics, a return to local control is long overdue — and some have tried to apply legal and political pressure.
A complaint submitted to the state attorney general in December alleges that the school closures “disproportionately” affected students with disabilities, English learners and other vulnerable students.
The closures left “entire neighborhoods … without a local school, creating ‘school deserts’ while disrupting educational services,” according to the complaint, which was filed by the ACLU of Southern California and John Hughes, head of the district’s teachers union.
Conflicting Inglewood narratives
School district enrollment has plummeted, dropping from nearly 18,000 students in 2003-04 to fewer than 6,000 today. Depending on how the tally is made, 30% to more than 40% of campuses have closed.
The county education office talks of gradual but real progress as well as difficult but necessary decisions to avert educational and financial disaster. They also describe a school system in recovery that offers a quality academic product.
“We’ve really begun to turn around the instructional program,” said county-appointed Administrator James Morris. For older students, he points to new career technical programs and for younger students, a structured reading program.
Although teachers salaries have been the lowest among K-12 school systems in the county, significant recent raises are kicking in.
The district headquarters will be demolished to become a YMCA — eventually giving local students their first access to a pool as part of a public-school program. The district office will move into one of the closed campuses.
Meanwhile, the two, formerly large, comprehensive high schools have consolidated into one, with Inglewood High students moving to Morningside High while Inglewood High is nearly totally rebuilt. The $240 million bond-funded project includes a pedestrian bridge connecting the school to a refurbished city library. Morningside High will eventually be torn down for a residential development.
A new option for students is a small high school, founded by music moguls Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, focused on project-based learning to impart the fundamentals of design, technology and entrepreneurship. That school is located at a recently closed middle school.
Both critics and defenders of the county’s stewardship draw selectively from annual reports by Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, an independent state agency that helps local educational agencies with management and financial issues.
When it came to closing under-enrolled schools, FCMAT praised Inglewood’s process: “To promote transparency and meaningful community engagement, the district conducted a series of public meetings.”
The ACLU complaint reaches a different conclusion, alleging the closure process did not comply with state law: “The closures have been accompanied by egregious procedural and equity failures, as District leadership made decisions without meaningful community engagement.”
The FCMAT reports have agreed with the critics on the harms of the instability and the slow pace of improvement.
The 2026 FCMAT report, however, cites recent progress under Morris, a retired superintendent who stepped in to lead Inglewood Unified in January 2023.
For many in the community, the outside control has simply lasted way too long.
“State control was top-down and unresponsive,” wrote Inglewood teacher Cicely Bingener in her UCLA doctoral dissertation, which was quoted in the ACLU complaint. “The revolving door of leadership and a compliance-driven culture created conditions where schools were destabilized and community trust was shattered.”
Parents also are quoted in the complaint: “When my daughter learned her school would close,” one parent said, “she started crying and said, ‘I’m going to miss my friends.’”
“That school was our community,” the parent said. “When it closed, it felt like they erased part of our history.”
Overall achievement remains low: 33% of students scored as proficient or better in English on state tests; 20% in math. However, these scores did surpass pre-pandemic levels last year — which is more than most California school districts can claim.
Robbie Tate, principal of La Tijera Elementary School and former district student, said Inglewood is on the rise.
“Throughout this process, it’s made our schools better for our kids,” she said, adding that improved school facilities are important to the community, as is “making sure we have qualified teachers, reaching out to parents — building that partnership.”
Warnings persist
While all parties seems to want a return to local control, FCMAT waved a warning flag in its most recent report.
The district’s financial reserves are being rapidly spent down, the report stated. It doesn’t help that previous budget-cutting measures “have not been fully implemented, contributing to unsustainable deficit spending and unnecessary consumption of reserves,” FCMAT said. The report expressed concern about audit findings that identified “significant deficiencies in internal control … that leave the district’s assets susceptible to misstatement, theft, or fraud.”
Ashley Ahn, a former Times reporter, contributed to this story.
The post The longest ever state school takeover is ending as Inglewood steps toward local control appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
