Maybe this situation rings true for families with school-aged children: You drop off your children on the first day of school. You meet your child’s teacher. And then, several weeks later, you learn your child’s teacher has been displaced — shuffled to another classroom.

“Norm Day” — the process by which a district re-aligns its teacher workforce to account for changes in enrollment — is a long-standing practice that’s rankled parents and educators for decades.

The 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 and is president of the district school board.

Why is counting students important?

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 attendance.

“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, for example, 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 teachers 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.

What is Norm Day?

LAUSD recalibrates its enrollment on the fifth or sixth Friday of the school year. This year, Norm Day is Friday, Sept. 19. 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 to LAist in 2023 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 same year 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 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.

How parents have advocated 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.

But for parents, it’s not always clear what resources are 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,” says parent Lori Rosales, a former parent teacher association president who has helped coordinate family responses.

Parents LAist spoke to say there are several avenues they've tried:

• Social media: Parents posted about the situation at the school and asked for a resolution on the superintendent’s public posts. (This month, the ACLU backed parents' rights to post about their children's schools.)
  
• District administration: Parents met with the school’s principal and the district’s regional leadership responsible for the schools in their area. LAUSD is divided into four regions— north, south, east, and west— and the contact information for the office of each regional superintendent is online.
  
• Online petition: Online petitions do not force a school district to act in the same way that collecting signatures for a ballot proposition legally mandates a vote on a policy. Instead, online petitions can help quantify a community’s collective support and explain the impact of the district’s action on families.

Senior editor for education Ross Brenneman contributed to this story. Illustration by Adriana Pera.