The School District has been running our Middle School and High School at enrollment levels that are historically pretty high (scroll down to see graphs below), and much larger than most experts feel are beneficial (especially for economically and racially diverse schools such as ours).
The high enrollments in recent years are the result of the School District admitting ever increasing numbers of new permit students into our secondary schools.
It is not the case that the School District has been trying to maintain normal enrollment levels with additional permits in recent years, but rather that the District has been running up our enrollments to 25-year highs recently by taking ever increasing numbers of new permit students.
Our District is now comprised of over 22 percent permit students from outside of Culver City. This school year alone, the School District took 116 brand new permit students into the Middle School and 160 into the High School. (We also took 204 new permits at our elementary schools.)
I have been hearing a lot of very positive things from Middle School parents about their school this year, and I'm very encouraged that the Middle School will get even better.
This is in sharp contrast to parents’ feelings two years ago when the School District took so many new permit students that the overcrowded conditions forced the District to make an emergency purchase of portable classrooms, which still sit on the Middle School playground.
Parents, including myself, have been complaining loudly, and the School District has allowed the Middle School enrollment to drop down somewhat during the last two years.
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Note that at any level shown on the MS graph above, we are considered to be a very large MS, and that the few years immediately preceding those shown on the graph, our MS enrollment was in the 1,000 student range.
On the other hand, the High School continues to run at just a few students shy of its 25-year plus peak level. A teacher who is also a parent of a high schooler was complaining to me about how crowded the High School is. Only half jokingly, she offered to strap a video camera on her child so that we could show everyone how crowded it really is.
Many parents and candidates echoed similar feelings during the last School Board elections.
As a parent with a current fourth grader, I want to know that School District is committed to continuing the process of slowly bringing down the Middle School enrollment and not have to worry that the District might just run the enrollment right back up to a ridiculous high level again.
I also want to know that the High School enrollment will be pulled back down in a slow and controlled fashion. However, the School District has no policy concerning target enrollments at our schools or how many new permits can be added.
Correction: As School Board member Steve Gourley recently pointed out at a Board meeting, we have had a policy of having no policy.
Basically, School District administrators can do whatever they want, enrollment-wise, because our elected School Board, which is supposed to set policy, has no policy.
Culver City and its parents deserve better.
Regardless of the enrollment numbers agreed upon, parents deserve to be part of the decision-making process.
We should have a right to know what to expect, enrollment-wise, when our children attend District secondary schools.
We have some really great permit students in our schools. But I would argue you can always have too much of a good thing.
Really large enrollments don’t benefit our existing permit students any more than they benefit our Culver City resident students.
We can let all our existing permit students and their siblings remain within our schools without accepting significant numbers of new permits into our secondary schools.
I believe this would not only keep more of our local Culver City students in our Culver City schools, but it would help us retain quality permit students and active permit families.
I would also argue that there is virtually no support from within Culver City to have our schools run at large percentages of permits, and our schools definitely need the full and complete support of Culver City residents.
It is time for the School District to set some reasonable policies concerning target enrollment levels and permits. I am glad that the School Board recently agreed to agendize further discussion of the permit policy, and I hope this leads to some reasonable enrolment and permit policies being adopted in the very near future.
