The Brief

On Friday, Sept. 15, Atwater Avenue Elementary school parents and students learned that three teachers could have to leave the school more than a month into the academic year.

The shuffling was a result of “Norm Day,” a longstanding student tallying practice that’s rankled parents and educators for decades.

“I'm a huge supporter and proponent of my kids going to public school, but frankly policies like Norm Day make the public school system in L.A. feel a bit unstable,” said Daniel Addelson, who has two children at the Atwater Village school.

If a school has fewer students enrolled than previously expected, teachers can be displaced and classes are re-arranged.

“Norm Day strikes fear in the heart of administrators,” said LAUSD Board Member Scott Schmerelson, a former middle school principal at L.A. schools for more than a decade. He now represents the West San Fernando Valley and North Hollywood.

LAUSD has yet to provide the district-wide totals from this year’s Norm Day count, though the results have reshaped some schools over the last few months.

But as Atwater Avenue Elementary School families learned, the initial consequences of the Norm Day count are not always final. The district can retain teachers even when their enrollment falls below expected levels.

What is Norm Day?

The way schools count students is deceptively complicated and has tangible consequences.

California funds schools based on how many students, on average, show up in the classroom each day. This calculation is called average daily enrollment.

“The school has to have a seat for every child who's enrolled whether they're paid for it or not,” said USC education professor Lawrence Picus. “It seems that we have a responsibility to ensure they have enough money to do that.”

Every year, the Los Angeles Unified School District estimates how many students will show up at its more than a thousand schools when the academic year starts in August. Those estimates are the basis for how many administrators, educators, and other staff each school employs.

California’s education code, the teacher’s union contract, and district policy influence class size and as a result, how many educators are hired. There are financial penalties for schools that exceed the maximum class sizes defined in the education code.

Class size is also shaped by other factors, including whether the school has predominantly students of color, the types of programs offered and grade level. For example, California requires one adult for every 12 students in transitional kindergarten classes.

LAUSD recalibrates its enrollment on the fifth Friday of the school year, Norm Day. This year it was Sept. 15. Other districts, including Long Beach and San Bernardino City, typically adjust their staffing earlier in the school year.

An LAUSD district spokesperson wrote in a statement that “five weeks allows schools sufficient time to enroll students for an optimal capture.”

Though that explanation eludes even longtime educators like Schmerelson, who told LAist in October that he couldn’t explain the Norm Day timing — “I don't know the answer and I won't make one up,” Schmerelson said.

School districts also report their enrollment to the California Department of Education on “Census Day”— the first Wednesday in October. If they overestimated their enrollment, that means they’ll have more staff than they have funding for — which means layoffs or reassignments.

Ahead of the Norm Day count, some schools scramble to enroll more children to keep teachers in their classrooms. Just a few students can make the difference between retaining and releasing an educator.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said in a statement last year that while “crucial,” Norm Day brings upheaval to some schools.

“The process is not community centric, student centric, or teacher centric,” Carvalho said. “There is a better way to conduct a student count and implement its results in a way that adjusts for the movement of teachers, reflects the ongoing trends of schools and better allocates resources to address community needs prior to the start of a school year.”

A spokesperson wrote in a statement after this story was published that the district is helping schools retain would-be displaced teachers with additional funding, but did not provide details.

The consequences for a school

In early September, a colorful flier posted to Atwater Avenue Elementary’s online message board advertised the school was still enrolling students. The caption was more dire. “We are still UNDER-ENROLLED and at risk of displacing TWO teachers… Please help us by getting the word out.”

On Friday, Sept.15, Principal Jorge Ríos told parents that two teachers would lose their jobs at the school. A third position on the chopping block would be funded with money originally designated for teaching assistants, but two third grade dual-language educators couldn’t be spared.

“At the gates of the front of the school, there's just kid after kid coming out and they were in tears,” Addelson said of that day’s pick-up. “They had lost a teacher and a role model that was important to them.”

One of them was his 8-year-old daughter Eliot who said goodbye to a teacher she described as “really nice” and “really helpful.”

“If there was a problem at recess she would talk about it,” Eliot said. “She would try to, like, resolve it so no one else in the class has that same problem.”

Daniel Addelson's son, Elan, left, and daughter Eliot, right, both attend Atwater Avenue Elementary School's dual-language Spanish program. "It was really just important for us that our kids grow up learning two languages," Addelson said. "We were thrilled that that was in the neighborhood."

(

Mariana Dale

/

LAist

)

A group of parents spent the weekend brainstorming how to retain their school’s educators.

Neighborhood families advocated for the start of their school’s dual language Spanish program in 2017. Parents also spoke out in 2019 against the displacement of Ríos himself. The administrator ultimately stayed at the school.

“I immediately went into research mode,” said parent Kirstin Eggers. “I went deep into the L.A. Unified paperwork, contracts, and all of this information online.”

Other parents started pleading the school’s case in an online petition, through comments on the superintendent’s social media posts, and by contacting district officials, their school board representative Jackie Goldberg’s office, and journalists.

Parents become advocates for change

Norm Day outcomes have been altered before.

LAUSD gave schools more flexibility in their staffing in 2020 and allowed them to use money from the previous year and a one-time fund to save teaching positions that would have otherwise been cut after Norm Day.

Meanwhile, Addelson's daughter Eliot was assigned a new teacher, who formerly taught second grade, while some of her peers were moved into classes that combined third and fourth grade.

An LAUSD administrator with knowledge of the situation said school and district leaders were already working to mitigate the displacement of teachers when families reached out.

“When we hear from parents we always like to be responsive to them,” the administrator said.

Lori Rosales has three sons, two who currently attend Atwater Avenue Elementary and one recently left to start middle school. Her youngest child temporarily had a different teacher after Norm Day in mid-September.

(

Mariana Dale

/

LAist

)

But for parents, it was unclear what resources were available to retain beloved educators.

“It was just so hard to, like, work at something and just not feel like anybody was listening to us,” said parent Lori Rosales. The former parent teacher association president stepped in to help coordinate the families’ response.

Ultimately, the Region West Superintendent’s office provided an undisclosed amount of funding to fund one of the third-grade dual language teacher positions and the school funded another according to a district spokesperson.

In her third classroom configuration of the year, Eliot was reunited with her best friend.

“I'm learning a lot more than I learned in second grade,” Eliot said. Her recent homework included practicing spelling words like sharks, carnivores, forward, and arctic.

Her dad, and other parents, are still wary of future disruptions.

“When Eliot goes to fourth grade, I don't want to have to wonder, 'Is she going to lose her teacher five weeks or six weeks into the school year again?” Addelson said.

Eliot scrolls through her third-grade homework. She likes to create dishes like mushroom stew in the video game Minecraft when she has free time on the computer.

(

Mariana Dale

/

LAist

)

Kirstin Eggers’ son was among the handful of third grade students who remained in a combined fourth grade classroom even after the school restored two teachers.

“I feel like his world got very small,” Eggers said. “And yet he's also overcrowded. It kind of feels like the worst of both worlds right now. I'm trying to be patient, but it's difficult to hear.”

Eggers said the experience has her rethinking how she volunteers her time engaged with her son’s education.

“I feel really ingrained and really interested in the numbers aspect of this and the policy aspect of this,” Eggers said. “That has kind of awakened in me being an extreme advocate.”

That ocean breeze is just not cutting it in schools in Torrance and Long Beach as Southern California reels from a heat wave.

Parents have taken to social media, created petitions and are proposing a bond measure in order to address the sweltering classrooms as temperatures hit triple digits in some areas.

Only 25% of Torrance Unified classrooms have air conditioning, according to a district spokesperson. And while 90% of Long Beach Unified schools have air conditioning, the schools without air conditioning have to bear this heat spell until the end of 2027 when new air conditioning will be in all classrooms.

What are schools doing to beat the heat?

In Long Beach, the district says there are portable fans in classrooms without AC and the district has installed heat-blocking window covers.

"The things that we do immediately and have been doing for several years, hydration stations,” Keith Butler, the deputy superintendent at TUSD, told the school board early this week. “So our nutrition services freezes blocks of ice, puts them into containers with water, and students are — and staff are able to rotate through and at least get ice water.”

There is also a classroom rotation system so everyone gets a turn in cooling zones, he said.

Can schools close on extreme heat days?

Eric Mitchell, a spokesperson for LBUSD, told LAist, “The District will not close schools because of extreme weather unless the City of Long Beach Public Health Department or a state-authorized emergency response agency directs it.”

Baillie echoed his words adding that a state-declared emergency allows schools to close temporarily without needing to make up teaching time. School funding is dependent on attendance and instructional time.

If a local emergency is declared, school districts, she said, must consult with labor unions to adjust the school schedule to either extend the school year or move to a student-free professional development day.

“Our district is actively discussing creating union-approved ‘weather days’ that would provide a mechanism to adjust the schedule,” Baillie said. “Thresholds would be part of that discussion and might focus on when national weather alerts elevate a heat advisory to an extreme heat event, as they did this week.”

So how can Torrance get ACs in the classroom?

School districts like Torrance pay for facility upgrades like new ACs through district issued bond measures. A school district takes a loan and the people in that city pay back that loan through an increase in their property taxes. That is because there is no specific state allocation of funding for major upgrades or construction. Most of the money schools get from the state is spent on instruction and other student services. There have been some occasional grant programs, like CalShape, but no ongoing source of funding.

This week, a petition to get TUSD to place a bond measure on the ballot to fund ACs has already garnered over 1500 signatures.

But, Baillie said, “Third-party polling completed earlier this year showed a willingness to vote for additional future bonds; however, when specifically asked about the costs of specific bonds to fund the $520 million needed to upgrade the electrical systems and install AC at all 34 campuses, polling showed there would not be enough support (bonds require 55% +1 of voters in an election) to pass a bond for AC.”

And so the bond measure was not placed on the upcoming ballot.

Butler, the deputy superintendent, explained during this week’s school board meeting that parents cannot simply donate an AC unit.

“ One [reason] is it's not super effective to have a typical window unit from a home that would be trying to cool a 960 sq. ft. classroom with 27 students and a teacher, maybe an instructional aide,” he said. “But the bigger issue is the ones that are large enough to really do that, the room has to have a large electrical load, and our electrical system within our buildings where most of them were built in the 1960s, it's just not meant to handle what it does.”

LAist reporter Mariana Dale contributed to this article. 

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is hosting a buyback event Sunday where people can exchange their e-bikes and e-motorcycles for up to $1,000 in gift cards. The goal is to reduce the number of illegal bikes on the road, and give parents an incentive to get dangerous vehicles out of kids’ hands.

“These vehicles are not child’s play, and the consequences are incredibly dangerous and increasingly deadly,” DA Todd Spitzer said in a news release announcing the event.

Communities in Orange County have been grappling with a surge in e-bikes and e-motos on the road, including among young kids, and an accompanying increase in serious crashes.

“Our area has pretty much the highest concentration of e-bike injuries and e-bike accidents in the country,” said Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the trauma medical director at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.

Takeuchi said  just over 70% of the children treated at the hospital for e-bike injuries had some level of head injury, “from a simple concussion to devastating brain damage, brain bleed and skull fracture."

A lot of those injuries are among teenagers not wearing helmets, he said. Plus, many e-bikes on the market are too heavy and fast for children to control, Takeuchi said.

Besides safety concerns, tensions have flared with other drivers, pedestrians, and neighbors in areas with heavy concentrations of e-bikes.

Newport-Mesa Unified School District became one of the first districts in the country this year to restrict e-bikes to high school campuses only. District leaders say the policy is working to disincentivize young students from riding e-bikes to school. But at one middle school, students with e-bikes have opted to ride them anyway, parking in the surrounding neighborhood and raising the ire of homeowners.

The DA’s approach

The DA’s office has started to target parents who allow their children to ride e-bikes and e-motorcycles that have been illegally modified for high speeds, sometimes with deadly consequences. In April, the district attorney filed child endangerment charges against a mother from Aliso Viejo after her 14-year-old son struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest. The boy was riding an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 mph.

Details of the buyback program

The e-bike and e-motorcycle buyback program is part of the DA’s plan to address safety concerns with e-bikes. Local police departments, hospitals and the California Office of Traffic Safety will also be onsite with information booths.

People can bring in functioning or non-functioning e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and pocket bikes and exchange them for gift cards worth up to $1,000 — while supplies last.

The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 13, at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.

An appeals court issued a ruling Friday that strikes down a federal government effort to block a lower court’s order requiring the construction of 2,550 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles.

The long-running case, brought forward by disabled veterans struggling with homelessness in the L.A. area, has centered on the use of the sprawling 400-acre VA campus.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had previously scrutinized leases for the private Brentwood School’s athletic facilities, a parking lot company, an oil drilling enterprise and UCLA’s baseball stadium.

Ruling that the campus was meant to aid veterans, Carter ordered the VA to not renew the leases and quickly build 750 units of temporary housing and 1,800 units of permanent housing.

But Carter’s September 2024 order has been on hold ever since the defendants asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review his decision.

Case returns to lower court

On Friday, more than two-thirds of the court’s 29 judges ruled against the VA’s petition for a rehearing.

“It's a historic day for veterans,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs.

“The government has been fighting their veterans, who went to fight on behalf of the nation,” he added. “They've been fighting them like they are the enemy. They went to the district court to fight. They lost.”

Rosenbaum said he’s pleased to see the case return to Carter’s courtroom after a long appeals process. Carter, himself a Marine Corps veteran who served in the Vietnam War, took an active role in pushing the VA to address a homelessness crisis that has thousands of former service members experiencing homelessness on any given night in L.A. County.

Could the VA pursue further appeals? 

Carter has also ordered the VA to stop using veterans' disability payment benefits as a reason to make them ineligible for supportive housing programs due to income restrictions.

But Rob Reynolds, an Iraq War veteran who advocates for L.A.’s veteran community, said the federal government’s attempts to win an appeal could continue.

“The government can still appeal this to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Reynolds said.

When veterans involved in the case first heard today’s news on the 9th Circuit ruling, he said they immediately asked about the potential for further appeals.

“All of us are really hoping that the government stops this fight, and that we can get housing built for our veterans and end this madness once and for all,” Reynolds said.

A spokesperson for the VA declined to comment on the ruling, saying the department does not discuss pending litigation.

Jenny Yang, a comedian from L.A., has been traveling across the country turning immigrant grocery stores into comedy hubs. Now she’s back in L.A. getting ready to start a mini-residency in Highland Park, tape her first one-hour special and share moments from the tour.

Yang kicked off her Good Egg Immigrant Grocery Store Standup Comedy Tour in June in L.A., then took it to 15 cities across the country. She told LAist the decision came as a way to cope with the grief from her dad’s death, 10 failed in vitro fertilization treatments between 2020 and 2025 and seeing the news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids spread across the country.

She said the idea to tour grocery stores was a way to reclaim those spaces, after immigration enforcement left many afraid to go out and do simple tasks like buying groceries.

“If we cannot laugh in front of a wall of instant ramen around our bok choy," Yang said, "then what is the American dream for?"

Her routine wove in stories about her fertility struggles and the challenges of having to be a “good egg” growing up as the child of immigrant parents from Taiwan. Her hope for the tour was to connect with people, to make jokes and help people feel lighter after.

The tour proceeds went to local nonprofits serving immigrant communities, and Yang said those organizations helped recruit the grocery stores. She said some stores said no at first — they felt overwhelmed by ICE activity in their city, had lost staff or worried about drawing attention.

“That's part of the story of the tour is it's one thing to want to imagine this beautiful world where you can tell jokes inside of immigrant grocery stores," Yang said. "It's another thing to know what those obstacles are, and I think that's still very telling for where we are as a country.”

One moment stood out to Yang: performing at Shuang Hur Supermarket in Minneapolis. It’s near the memorial for Alex Pretti, the nurse that a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed in January as federal agents carried out immigration enforcement in the city.

“I was able to talk to Henry, the owner who’s a Chinese American uncle. [He] was so proud of being able to help his regular patrons, who for the most part even though it was an Asian centered grocery store, were majority Latino,” Yang said. “I was able to bear witness to their resilience as a community, what they did to take care of each other.”

Now she’s back in L.A. and is doing a mini-residency at the Outside In Theater at 5317 York Blvd. in Highland Park. Her first show is 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 12, followed by shows on Sept. 19 and 26 at the same time. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, and you can find them at Outside In's website.

In February 2027, Yang will be taping her first one-hour special at Rancho Meat Market #1 in Lincoln Heights. She describes it as a love letter to Los Angeles that’s endured so much, from the ICE raids to the January fires.

You can follow Jenny Yang’s work here.