A bill in the state Legislature could alter the process that allows parents to transfer their children between school districts, potentially affecting thousands of students in Los Angeles Unified.
The legislation, carried by South Bay Sen. Rod Wright, would limit the criteria that could be considered when parents appeal the denial of permits that would allow their children to attend school districts outside their home area.
Senate Bill 268 is sponsored by the Los Angeles Unified School District, which last year was met with parent uproar when it sought to clamp down on the large number of outgoing permits in an effort to retain attendance-based funding from the state.
Saturday was the deadline to apply for transfer permits for 2011-12.
Melissa Schoonmaker, Los Angeles Unified's coordinator for the Permits and Student Transfers Office, said the bill is needed to clarify standards used by the Los Angeles County Board of Education when it hears appeals from parents who have been denied permits.
The bill, set for a hearing today before the Senate Appropriations Committee, would affect county boards of education across the state. The Education Code currently contains no standards of review for appeal hearings, which have been increasing in number as many school districts restrict outgoing permits.
"For us, it's just providing neutral standards that every county board will be able to look at every appeal in front of them
in the same fashion," Schoonmaker said. "It makes it a fair process for the parent; it makes it a clearer process so that one parent isn't treated differently from another parent. Each case is viewed in the same lens."The district is again facing a backlash from parents who have organized a petition against the legislation, which they fear would limit their chances of leaving LAUSD for higher-performing outside schools.
Anger at Los Angeles Unified is rampant on a Facebook page for parents concerned about interdistrict transfers.
"They decided to go the back-door legislative route and try to change the rules essentially," said David Coffin, a Westchester parent who has two sons on permits in a high-achieving Manhattan Beach school.
Wright, a Democrat based in Inglewood who represents much of the South Bay, was unavailable to comment on the bill this week. But his office put out a statement saying "clarity" was needed in permit appeal hearings, where "decisions can be perceived as arbitrary."
It's not clear how much of an immediate effect the bill would have, but it comes as LAUSD has limited the reasons for which it will grant outgoing permits.
Last year, Schoonmaker said, the district granted more than 10,500 outgoing permits, and only 330 were appealed to the county board. Of those, the county sided with parents - granting the permits - in
107 cases.
Under the legislation, county boards could essentially only consider whether a school district had followed its own policy - or a transfer agreement between two districts - in denying a permit. There is also a provision allowing parents to present "relevant information that, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, could not have been produced, or that was improperly excluded" at the school district's permit hearing.
Schoonmaker said the latter provision would allow parents to tell their side of the story to county boards.
Nonetheless, the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which has jurisdiction over
80 school districts, opposes the bill.
"We believe that limiting the criteria to that proposed in the bill will create a disadvantage to those the appeal process was designed to serve, the parents and the students," Victor Thompson, LACOE's director of students support services, told the Senate Education Committee. "For example, if a school district only had five criteria and the parent was appealing based on other criteria, what would be the motivation to appeal?"
Right now, the county board can consider myriad criteria when deciding on an appeal - making the bureaucratic process somewhat friendly to parents, Thompson said in an interview.
"We've developed the criteria the county board uses over decades and decades. The criteria was designed to be broad enough to accommodate all the different school districts," Thompson said.
High-achieving Wiseburn School District, which gets
40 percent of its student body from other districts, is likewise critical of the bill and has written to Wright in opposition.
"What used to be a surplus of students is now a situation where there's a scarcity of students. So in a sense there's competition for students," Superintendent Tom Johnstone said in an interview.
"Obviously LAUSD doesn't want to lose that per-pupil funding. It boils down to economics. For us, it's a lot more than economics; and for parents, it's a lot more than economics."
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