Why is the District now losing so many students? Isn’t there still enough of a demand for outside permits to mitigate this loss? Will the District have to lower its standards to attract more outside permits? Is this student loss just localized or is it due to a larger more regional reaction to the way the District publicly treated Ladera Heights during its sincere transfer request?
Hindsight Is Perfect
Had the School Board not been so hasty in its opposition to the Ladera Height request, we might not be seeing a continued decline in enrollment or worrying over the sobering prospects of future budget cuts. In fact, if they had been allowed to transfer, the 377 Ladera Heights students would have become resident students in our District. They would have brought with them over $2,200,000 in annual state funding. That’s in addition to the almost billion dollars in property value that would have been added to our School District’s tax base and the $17,000,000 in property tax savings for homeowners on the over $92,000,000 still owed on Prop T.
Restoring the Lighthouse
Why would a district with a declining enrollment even consider referring to itself as a “Lighthouse District?” Is this newly resurrected, self-bestowed designation being used to try and affect the public perception of our District? Is it only being done for P.R. purposes? Or is it the School Board’s marketing ploy to try to attract more students to the District or head off the loss of even more students?
It’s going to take much more than P.R.-driven slogans to mend our District’s public reputation that this Board has fostered over these past two years. It seems that we, taxpayers, will still continue to pay more. But the most disheartening aspect of all, is, it appears that the schools and the students will soon be paying the price for our Districts turning an uncaring cold shoulder toward the genuinely concerned families of our next-door neighbors in Ladera Heights.
