BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
On Feb 16, 2010, LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines sent out a memo to the LAUSD Board Members in Change in Attendance Permit Policy.
Under its new transfer policy, LAUSD will only grant permits to children who have one year to graduation or promotion at their non-LAUSD school incoming 5th, 8th or 12 graders, or to students whose parents work in other school districts.
LAUSD expects to cancel four-fifths of the 12,249 transfer permits it grants to students, allowing them to attend school outside the district. Those pupils will have to transfer to LAUSD schools this summer.
PARENTS CONCERNS:
Parents taking advantage of better-performing schools more distant than their neighborhood LAUSD schools said they are devastated.
Application dates for private schools are long past, as have the application dates for magnet and charter school in LAUSD. Further, students who have been attending school out of district, often from kindergarten, have not accrued the points needed to get into any LAUSD magnet schools. In most cases their only option is to be dropped, without a net, into their home schools, most which are overcrowded and have the lowest API scores in the state.
- Families who have the best interest of their children should be able to make decisions on where their children attend school.
- We advocate that non-essential, non-school based services, and any non-instructional program be considered for cuts prior to forcing children who have been receiving inter-district permits be forced into learning communities they have no previous experience.
- The proposed change in pulling children out of their learning environment will have deep ramifications to programs children and therefore should be left to the judgment of the parents.
- We advocate that non-essential, non-school based services, and any non-instructional program be considered for cuts prior to trying to enlist revenues from the reversal of decades of allowing inter district permits to attend other school districts.
- We advocate for statewide and local legislative changes, including local parcel taxes, in order to create more sustainable and locally controlled funding sources for education, HOWEVER IF THIS POSITION IS NOT REVERSED, WE THE UNDERSIGNED WILL BE TRULY DEVASTATED. GIVEN THE FACT THAT THERE IS A PARCEL TAX ON THE JUNE 2010 BALLOT, WHICH WE WOULD SUPPORT, THIS MAY CAUSE MANY TO VOTE AGAINST IT.
- We as concerned citizens, in endorsing the principles and proposals set forth above, are holding Superintendent Cortines and the Board of Education to their commitment to, reverse the policy of restricting inter district permits to those children who have previously been allowed to do so.
- This petition was written by K-12 parents, March 2010.
Sincerely,
We the undersigned are concerned public school parents.
While our children may attend a school out of district, we have paid close attention to the policies of the current board and Superintendent Cortines. We have been very impressed and heartened by the progress and desire for change within the district. All of you took on a monumental task of running the district. While there are many great teachers, schools and programs, the district has lacked for quite some time fiscal oversight, clear pedagogical practices and a true mission of educating students. We see the tide turning under your leadership.
We know you have made some difficult decisions as leaders of the second largest school district in the country; we are asking you to make a difficult and right decision for all students on permits. We are all parents who are committed to public education in the state of California. Many of us have lobbied in Sacramento for public school funding, written letters to our representatives for all students to have access to quality public education. All of us here have participated in countless hours of fundraising for public schools. I see us on the same side as all of you- we all want quality public schools.
We each found one for our child. We are asking you to let our child stay in the program that works for him or her while we all continue to work together, to be unified for all public schools.
