Inglewood moves closer to regaining control of its schools after years of state oversight

Inglewood is a step nearer to running its own schools again. The Inglewood Unified School District, under state control since a financial collapse more than a decade ago, has cleared key recovery benchmarks that put it on a path to return authority to its locally elected board, potentially as soon as 2027.

Valeria Ortiz July 10, 2026 at 1:52 AM

For years, the people of Inglewood have not really been in charge of their own school district. That may finally be changing.

What happened

Inglewood Unified has met new milestones in its long, state-supervised recovery, including in the areas of finance and facilities, moving it closer to the return of local control, LAist reported. If the district stays on track through a further state review, authority could begin shifting back to the elected board, with officials pointing to 2027 as a realistic target.

How Inglewood lost control

The district's troubles date to 2012, when a fiscal crisis forced the state to step in with an emergency bailout loan. In exchange, California took over: a state-appointed administrator was installed to run the district, and the locally elected school board was reduced to an advisory role, stripped of real decision-making power, LAist reported. It has remained under that arrangement ever since, making Inglewood one of the longest-running such takeovers in California.

The road back

Getting out of state control is not a single vote but a checklist. Districts in this situation must demonstrate progress across defined areas, including governance, personnel, student achievement, facilities and, crucially, finances, and Inglewood has now cleared the major ones, LAist reported. Even after local control returns, a state-appointed trustee is expected to retain the power to overrule the board until the district has fully repaid its state loan, a debt that will take years more to clear.

What officials say

County education officials credited the district's turnaround, and local leaders framed the moment as a return of accountability to the community. A board member said the elected panel would once again be able to make decisions on behalf of Inglewood's voters, students and families, a shift that supporters hope will help rebuild trust, LAist reported.

What's still hard

The progress does not erase the underlying pressures. Like many districts, Inglewood has grappled with declining enrollment, the same kind of trend that helped push it into crisis in the first place, and the loan repayment will constrain its finances for years. Regaining control, in other words, is not the end of the district's challenges, but it would restore something Inglewood lost a long time ago: the ability of its own community to decide how its schools are run.