A modern, vacant and vandalized $34-million public school sits next to Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters — a campus paid for with taxpayer-financed bond money, but so burdened with debt and damage that it’s not clear that anyone can afford to move in.
The compact, aesthetically striking campus is marred by widespread graffiti. Vandals have punched holes in floors, walls and ceilings over the last five years. Recent photos of the inside appear to show puddles and stains from water damage and char marks from fire.
The district is paying at least $20,000 a month in security and maintenance, and last year calculated having spent more than $1 million to secure and maintain the building.
The empty Miramar campus — informally named for its address of 1215 Miramar St. — stands as a parable for looming challenges as L.A. Unified leaders determine how to deal with surplus space. Confronting the dual problem of a financial crisis compounded by a steep enrollment decline, the Board of Education is under increasing pressure to close schools. Community workshops and studies are underway to determine how many campuses will be shuttered and consolidated — and where.
“This is a story of what happens when we don’t find a way to turn our school buildings into
usable spaces for the community,” said Keith Dell’Aquila, a senior advocate with the California Charter Schools Assn. “One of the things that I worry about is that this could be a foreshadowing of what’s going to happen when the district consolidates campuses. If they don’t find good uses for them and quickly, this is what happens.”
In retrospect, Miramar should never have been built, based on the district’s own analysis. The school was under construction in 2012 as enrollment was already a decade into steady decline.
Since peaking at more than 720,000 K-12 students in 2003, L.A. Unified enrollment has dropped by about 50% over the last 23 years. About two-thirds of campuses operate at or below 60% of capacity, per a recent report from the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team.
Severely under-enrolled schools add to management costs and lead to combined grades in elementary schools and limited course opportunities at the secondary level. A steady annual enrollment decline of about 2.3% accelerated to the 3% to 5% range during the pandemic school closures and the second Trump administration.
L.A. Unified officials declined to answer questions about the Miramar property and its history. Instead, they referred queries to legal documents filed in a court dispute about whether the district had to provide the site to a charter school.
District officials acknowledged that each under-used school site will embody its own unique challenges.
“Every district property presents its own unique circumstances, including facility needs, legal and financial considerations, funding requirements, enrollment, educational program needs, and community factors,” unnamed officials said in a statement. “For that reason, the district believes it is important to conduct a thorough review and meaningful community engagement before determining a path forward for any individual site.”
More than a decade of woes
What’s uniquely challenging about Miramar is that under state law it is designated for a charter school because school bonds set aside for charters funded most of its construction. L.A. Unified still exerts substantial control, however, because it also paid for millions of dollars in construction costs and is the permanent owner of the property.
Charters are privately managed public schools that compete with district-run schools for students and enroll about 22% of public school students within the boundaries of L.A. Unified.
In 2007, as enrollment was declining, Miramar was among 18 construction projects that L.A. Unified canceled as no longer necessary to relieve overcrowding and return every student to a normal two-semester schedule. At many campuses, to manage overcrowding, the district had been running year-round schedules, with the school year shortened by nearly a month, to accommodate its burgeoning student population.
Canceling unneeded projects also made sense because schools were costing more to build than had been planned for. Bond money was running low and also was needed to repair older schools.
But Camino Nuevo Charter Academy wanted to pursue building the campus and won the school district’s approval. At the time, charter support was strong on the Board of Education and the board approved spending millions in public funds on the Miramar project — even though it was among the 18 school projects deemed unnecessary.
The school was paid for with a combination of state funds, district funds and a state loan the charter would have to repay. The district’s facility division acquired the land and managed the construction, which began in 2011, with the Camino Nuevo charter school opening in 2013.
The district advanced construction funds — and, even after state funding arrived, still provided more than $13 million total, according to district claims in court documents.
Tucked beside the district-operated Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, Miramar is a compact three-story structure on less than an acre and a half. It was designed as two small learning communities in one building, with 19 classrooms and science labs arranged around shared spaces: a library, a multipurpose room, a dining area with a full kitchen and administrative offices and underground parking.
For athletics, students were to take advantage of fields shared by public schools in the area.
Camino Nuevo wanted the school because it was unable to offer enough high school space to the students who matriculated from its middle schools, said Ana Ponce, who was the head of Camino Nuevo at the time. But the new school could not attract enough students to remain in business, falling well below its projection of 500 students.
Camino Nuevo closed the campus in June 2021 and left behind $8 million in an unpaid construction loan from the state. The loan debt was frozen and the next tenant would have to pick up the payments, officials decided.
“Ultimately the campus was too far away” from the other Camino Nuevo schools, Ponce said. “Those students found alternatives, predominantly other charter high schools, that were closer to our middle school campuses.”
Other Camino Nuevo campuses are clustered one to two and a half miles to the west.
A 2023 financial disclosure filing from Camino Nuevo explained it this way: “After sustaining operating losses for many years,” the school “had experienced chronic under-enrollment due to saturation of charter high schools in the neighborhood, with as many as 10 high schools in a one-mile radius.”
Since Camino Nuevo’s departure, one charter operator almost moved in but then backed out. A second charter operator was ready to go, but the district backed out of that deal in 2022, as then-Supt. Alberto Carvalho wanted to explore options for a district-run program.
“I had a big plan for it,” Carvalho said in a 2025 interview. “I envisioned really creating a one-of-a-kind school experience in that building, since it had been left open for a long period of time. … Use best practices and put them all under the same roof, such as a school without bells, with true teacher-led management and decision-making process. Think of community schools on steroids.”
But the state sued to stop the district from taking over, and a court sided with the state late in 2024. Superior Court Judge Stephen I. Goorvitch ruled that L.A. Unified hadn’t tried hard enough to find a charter operator.
Another charter eyes Miramar
The Los Angeles Academy of Arts and Enterprise would have liked to move in for the start of the current school year — and repeatedly expressed interest in the property. The charter school has worked to maintain its enrollment and identity despite operating in a succession of four locations since 2005. The academy currently operates out of nearby Belmont High.
“Some families have told us that uncertainty about a permanent campus affects their enrollment decisions,” said Principal Alejandro Macias. “Our concern is maintaining a recognizable school home and continuity for students.”
At the moment, the charter has a lower enrollment than Camino Nuevo had for much of its tenure.
“We are open to exploring shared use of Miramar with a compatible district or charter middle school program,” Macias said.
The district’s requirements for taking over Miramar will make it challenging for a charter operator to make the economics pencil out, he said.
The district’s conditions include $750,000 “for prior operation and maintenance costs”; a monthly charge of more than $70,000 for the first three years; assumption of the state loan balance of $8,083,564, with estimated annual debt service of $457,783, according to L.A. Unified; and repairs for the vandalized building, which is being offered “as is,” Macias said.
A contractor has projected the cost of needed repairs at $1.86 million, according to a preliminary estimate reviewed by The Times.
“We want 1215 Miramar to be LAAAE’s long-term home, but we need a Facilities Use Agreement that makes that commitment financially sustainable,” Macias said. “We are seeking an arrangement that provides stability for our students and families, protects taxpayers’ investment in the facility and benefits the surrounding neighborhood and the broader Los Angeles community.”
District officials said in their statement that they are working in good faith to find a solution — but so far no deal has emerged to bring students back to the abandoned school.
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