L.A. Unified postpones change to district transfers

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines said at a board meeting today he’ll postpone his plan to rescind most permits that allow students to enroll in schools outside the district.

Before the meeting, about 100 parents protested the policy change outside L.A. Unified headquarters. Some parents brought their kids. A few Spanish-speaking parents took part in the protest. Deborah Komatsu showed because she lives in L.A. and has a permit to enroll her second grader in a Japanese-immersion program the Culver City Unified School District. "They've really pulled the rug out from under us," she said referring to L.A. Unified's permit policy change.

Komatsu’s son is one of about 12,000 students with L.A. Unified inter-district transfer permits. The district wants the students back so it can recoup about $50 million in state money that goes to the districts that enroll them.

Santa Monica public schools receive about a thousand L.A. Unified students. Laurie Lathem’s second grader is one of them. She said the education he’s receiving there is ideal, and she’ll find a way to keep him there. "I’ll probably rent my house out and look for a one bedroom apartment in a neighborhood that I cannot afford to live in. I cannot imagine pulling him out of that school. It’s inconceivable."

Inside board of education chambers, as discussion began, Superintendent Cortines said that he’d talked to parents, educators, and school lawyers and that he’d instruct district officials to grant most of the new permits and renewals for the fall academic term. "I am not knowingly going to harm the education of boys and girls and young people and distress the adults in their life."

Cortines told board members he’d submit an overhaul plan for inter-district transfer permits later this year. Those changes, if the board approves them, would affect students in the 2011 – 2012 school year. Culver City school board member Karlo Silbiger thanked Cortines for postponing the policy change. "The impact on our district would be huge, in terms of having to close down schools, move students around, losing revenue that could be in the many millions of dollars potentially."

Officials from Culver City, Torrance, Santa Monica and other districts may express relief. But now LA Unified will have to return to the painstaking work of finding more budget items to cut.

L.A. Unified board member Nury Martinez said the organized parent opposition to the permit change impressed her. She urged those parents to help L.A. Unified improve the neighborhood schools where they’ve declined to send their kids.