During this latest School Board campaign, which ends with today’s election, all five candidates have expressed their opposition to the transfer of students from Ladera Heights.
Some of the candidates have soap-boxed the popular belief that there are too many outside-permits being granted by our School District, that this is the major cause of the perceived over-crowding at some of our schools.
They have said that the District needs to wean itself off of this permit-addiction and replace the permits by attracting Culver City resident-students back home.
Their slogan is, "Culver City Schools for Culver City Students."
These supporters seem to think that local parents who already have taken a look at what Culver City schools have to offer and have decided to send their children out of the District can somehow be convinced into coming back into the District.
This is not going to happen.
What parent is going to disrupt the flow of a child's educational and social lives just to keep Culver City schools purely local? Yet, this same group wants to deny District access to neighboring families eager to join us. Families who are already convinced and sold on the great opportunities and advantages being offered here at our local schools. They whole-heartedly want to be able to buy-in and become a part of our District family's success story, not on permit, but as permanent, resident-students.
Believing Only What They Want
One of the continuing reasons given by the outspoken opponents of the Ladera Heights Transfer has been not knowing exactly how many new students will be involved. It may come as a surprise to some why not one School Board member has ever factually quoted the L.A. County Committee on School District Organization's official figure of “377 students,” published in its report released in January 2006.
The reason: Because some Board members have publicly stated that the figure is “unknowable,” and therefore the official figure is in error and cannot be believed. Do they think the committee just pulled this official number out of its hat? And yet, opponents believe all the other reported facts not in support of the transfer as being valid and true.
Trusting Our Own Numbers
If the “377 student” figure officially published is indeed untrustworthy because it is actually “unknowable,” then I can only suppose that some of our own District enrollment figures cannot be believed either. The District probably does not know the actual “breakdown” of our local student population within our own District.
I'm sure they can tell us exactly how many students there are attending our schools, how many permits they have granted, and the actual Average Daily Attendance funding the District is receiving. But can they tell us how many local school-aged children there are living within the School District borders? How many of those are currently attending other schools outside the District? How many local children are being educated in private schools or being home schooled?
Breaking the Habit
If the state experts' dire demographic predictions come true and declining enrollments start to occur throughout our region, other districts will start protecting their own student enrollments and their own ADA funding. They will reduce the number of permits they allow to leave. It will become increasingly difficult for smaller districts, such as ours, to continue to fill its vacant seats with permits. Without the buffer of permits to fill the empty desks, declines in School District enrollment will occur. Then District-wide cuts in staff and programs will have to be made.
There probably are now not enough local students living in Culver City to continue to fill each of our school sites at fiscally viable levels. What are we going to do as a district when the flow of outside permits starts to dwindle? Are we going to lower our permit standards?
Like it or not, critics of the District's permit policy need to realize that, at this time, permits are a necessity. Without permits, our schools could not be what they are today.
