The scale of Los Angeles Unified’s schoolyard-greening goal is reflected in its 2035 target: every campus should have at least 30% green space. In May 2024, the district estimated that bringing the roughly 600 campuses then below that threshold into compliance would cost about $3 billion over 11 years, according to LAist.
The district’s effort began with the Green Schools for All resolution, which the LAUSD Board of Education passed unanimously in 2022. LAUSD has said similar work is planned or underway at campuses in Westlake, Koreatown, and Pico Union, including Commonwealth Elementary, Hoover Elementary, MacArthur Park Elementary School for the Visual and Performing Arts, Los Angeles Elementary, 10th Street Elementary, Hobart Early Education Center, Plasencia Elementary, and Cochran Middle School.
The program faces an administrative as well as financial challenge. The LAUSD Board voted in February 2025 to eliminate internal administrative fees for nonprofit groups leading campus-greening projects, according to AfroLA, which reported that outside groups had encountered administrative overhead and delayed approvals.
One completed campus
Esperanza Elementary in Westlake provides a completed example of the scale of construction involved. Over six years, a $4.5 million project removed about 30,000 square feet of asphalt, added 35 trees, and increased green space from 9% to 37% of the campus, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Funding the larger goal
The district has identified some funding, but not a complete financing plan for the estimated $3 billion need. According to Los Angeles Unified, nonprofit partnerships secured more than $57 million in grants over the previous five years for tree planting and sustainability projects at 52 schools. The district also said a 2025 resolution would allocate up to $3 million in district resources, including eligible bond funds, for project fees, design reviews, inspections and required retrofits tied to nonprofit-led projects. Those amounts are far smaller than the district’s estimate for bringing all campuses below the threshold up to standard, although the figures cover different types of work and do not establish an exact remaining gap. The need is especially relevant in dense, older and lower-income parts of Los Angeles. The City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation has noted that trees and natural areas are nearly nonexistent in many such areas. That description provides context for Westlake’s exposure to heat, but the cited assessment does not quantify Westlake’s ranking or compare its vulnerability directly with other Los Angeles neighborhoods.
The renovated grounds include grass, native plants, a running track, a recreation and instructional lawn, stormwater-capture features, and solar-reflective basketball and handball courts. LAUSD and community leaders marked the completion with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, the Times reported.
The project was carried out through a partnership between LAUSD and the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, with funding from CAL FIRE and the California Natural Resources Agency, according to the Times. The school’s earlier greening work began in 2016 with a narrow native-plant habitat along Wilshire Boulevard; that area later attracted a burrowing owl that became the school mascot, according to the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust.
State support and districtwide need
Esperanza’s funding is part of a larger state effort. As of April 2026, the CAL FIRE Green Schoolyards Grant program had invested more than $156 million since 2022 in work at 215 school campuses, benefiting an estimated 94,000 children and adding more than 6,000 trees, according to the Office of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
LAUSD had 33 similar schoolyard-greening projects underway as of the month before Esperanza’s ribbon-cutting, district officials said, according to CBS News. The scale of the work reflects both the district’s policy goal and the physical conditions it is trying to change: UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation has found that unshaded asphalt schoolyards in Los Angeles can reach surface temperatures of up to 142 degrees Fahrenheit during summer heat waves, according to LAist.
At Esperanza, the new trees and planted areas are intended to provide shade and reduce heat, while the stormwater features are designed to address runoff on site. The campus therefore illustrates both the physical improvements LAUSD is pursuing and the larger funding and implementation problem involved in bringing similar changes to hundreds of schools.
