More than 12,000 schoolchildren who live in Los Angeles attend schools outside of the L.A. Unified School District. The district now wants 80 percent of them back.
The state provides about $5,000 per student per year. Multiply that by 10,000. That's $50 million LAUSD projects it will get from the state next year.
"We've made a concerted effort to build more schools, move more schools off the year-round calendar," said Rene Gonzalez, assistant superintendent of LAUSD. "We'll only have 32 schools next year that will be on the year-round calendar. We're creating small learning communities that have specialty course of study."
Students who are entering their final year in elementary, middle and high schools next year outside of LAUSD will be allowed to finish.
Parents angry with the LAUSD's new policy have organized a Facebook page to share ideas on how to overturn the policy.
For those who favor the district's action, they say this:
"Parents ought to support their local school," said parent Judy Hirsch. "This particular area draws from a huge, diverse population. Parents who feel that they need to leave the neighborhood are going to do that anyway."
Neighboring school districts such as Glendale and Santa Monica-Malibu Unified have indicated they stand to lose millions of dollars if students return to LAUSD as they'll be facing more cuts to their budgets.
