Another Way to Look at Choice

I'm not opposed to trying new things out in LAUSD.  Fact is, the district has needed a major overhaul for years.  And unfortunately in this financial crisis, the district will be overhauling itself for better or worse.

Yolie Aguilar Flores will be re-introducing and the board will be voting on a School Choice initiative  later this month, where newly built schools will be bid on by charter operators and LAUSD alike.  And while I like parts of the bill, the reality is the district already has choice, including the parents who opt out.  We just need to increase the options already available to us.

What the district needs is to loosen school boundaries, and increase the choice.  Every week I respond to parents who want to know how to get their child into a variety of schools that are well regarded.  These schools have essentially created a brand name for themselves.  Whether it's Granada Hills Charter High School with its early school year, or El Camino with its Academic Decathalon team, or Verdugo Hills High School with its unique Copernican Block schedule, parents seek these schools out.  

Rather than selling out the schools to some operator, I wish more schools would differentiate themselves, and create the products we want to see.  Whether that's a uniform-wearing, early school-school-year-starting, required summer school kind of place, or a part day on high-school campus, part day on college campus type school, or whether it's four-years of latin and four years of autoharp curriculum; think if the schools are allowed to create it, the families will flock to it.  

While partnering with parents to create what they want works for the short term (students move on in just a few years), it's hard to appreciate it working in the long term.  The reality is these schools take a few years to get up and running and the parents who start them up have to sacrifice a lot in hopes that their dream school is created (the dream media lab at my son's high school was completed late in his senior year).  To use a different analogy, if someone asked me to create the best restaurant ever, I don't know that I could start it from nothing, but show me restaurant row in any given town, and I'll gladly show you where I want to take my family for dinner.  Even health insurance allows most participants to choose the doctor they'll see.  Plans that force you to a particular provider are usually not well received.

The district  has no data on how many parents are homeschooling, and when given the option of the types of schools they'd actually want to attend would do so.  They also don't have any hard data on how many kids are being private schooled because of a lack of options in public schools.  Certainly if the highest rated public school was across the street from their homes, some home school and some private school parents would still choose those options.  Yet many families in LAUSD are trying to move from one school to another, and the moves are sometimes complementary.  I often hear of families trying to get into Frost Middle School, and many looking for a different type of campus for their students.

Given how many people vie for the magnet slots, and how many people try the open enrollment lotteries, only to be turned away, we need to start creating more attainable options (those that don't require 20 or more magnet points and planning from age 4).  I'm not hung up on bussing.  Frankly, parents will get their kids to the schools of choice using whatever method they must.  And forcing families to attend schools with options that go against their personal beliefs isn't going to convince more people to return to public education.

Conversely, we can't completely get rid of the school boundary zone.  Families who buy into a well-established school zone should have that investment rewarded.  But some of the newer schools are overlaying other boundaries.  Students at Northridge Academy come from Monroe, Granada or Cleveland.  I believe Hesby Oaks middle schoolers have the option of a 6-8 school or the K-8 span at Hesby.  These are the choices I'm talking about.

Even smaller cities with troubled schools could really make out.  The new high school in San Fernando could create an environmental science/urban planning academy that would allow students to work with the departments in the City of San Fernando in a way that would attract students with high test scores and active parents.

 Give us those types of choices--in the build it and they will come mentality--and watch families flock to great schools.