Updated: 2:12 p.m. Jan. 30, 2026
The empty campus of Worthington Elementary School, shuttered in December 2023 in spite of the protests of Inglewood parents, is headed for a future life as a public park.
Inglewood Unified School District county administrator James Morris said the district is putting the final touches on a plan to sell the 3-acre campus at 11101 S. Yukon Ave. to the city of Inglewood for $12 million. The land shares a property line with Center Park.
Mayor James Butts told The LA Local the city doesn’t often have land go up for sale, and officials didn’t want to pass up the chance.
“When we have an opportunity to purchase land, particularly adjacent to a current city use, we’re going to buy it,” Butts said.
City documents indicate plans to turn the campus into an extension of Center Park, roughly doubling the park’s green space. Proposed designs call for the removal of most of the campus buildings, though the main structure on the corner of Yukon Avenue and 111th Street would remain as a community event space.
Butts said the plans are tentative. It was not immediately clear how soon construction could begin once the sale was complete.
The planned park extension would also include a soccer field, basketball courts, play areas, and a dog park.
Inglewood currently has 0.89 acres of park land per 1,000 residents, according to city documents, though the city aims to increase the ratio to 1 acre per 1,000 residents. In contrast, the city of Los Angeles has 4.2 park acres per 1,000 residents.
The closure of Worthington Elementary drew protest from local families. At the time, families said they feared the district would sell the school site for development, ABC 7 reported.
Victoria Preciado, a Worthington parent before the school’s closure and member of the group Stop IUSD School Closures, told The LA Local she’s glad the campus is becoming a park.
She remains wary, she said, of potential plans to turn other shuttered schools into housing.
The district, she said, seems to be in line with the vision of city leaders to grow Inglewood’s entertainment core and revamp the city’s parks, schools and housing stock.
But, she said, the vision is “always at the expense of the people who are living here right now. We are constantly getting the message that we are not part of this future vision for the city of Inglewood.”
The school was one of six that have closed in recent years as the district battles years-long enrollment and financial troubles. Because Inglewood Unified has been under state receivership for 14 years, one person, a county-appointed administrator, has made those decisions — not the locally elected Board of Trustees.
Trustee Ernesto Castillo said district decisions made by a single decision-maker — including Worthington’s closure two years ago — have received understandable extra scrutiny from the community.
He said, though, that he believes Worthington’s planned future as a park is a good one, with the added bonus of giving the district a financial boost.
“It’s a really good [neighborhood] to increase the green space,” Castillo said.
Inglewood’s city council approved the $12 million purchase during a Jan. 15 meeting.
District documents, though, list the sale price for the property at $14 million. Morris said the discrepancy was due to a clerical error in documents prepared by the city.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t catch it,” Morris said.
The district plans to refile the paperwork with the $12 million amount at a future board meeting.
The city’s bid for the property beat out six others, most from real estate developers, according to district documents.
Morris said the district is unable to disclose the details of proposals it received for the property until after escrow on the sale is complete.
