One part of the bill that needs fleshing out through amendments involves a significant expansion of parental choice that Gov. Schwarzenegger� and Sen. Gloria Romero have pushed hard for."
Romero’s original bill, which died in the Assembly, would have given parents in the lowest 30 percent performing schools the right to transfer to a better school in another school district. The current bill scales back that right to the bottom tenth. But it still marks a major shift in state policy and philosophy – and a victory for Los Angeles parent groups that made their voices heard in Sacramento.
Just last summer, the advocacy group EdVoice looked like it was fighting a losing battle to renew a strictly voluntary parental choice program affecting only 5,000 students attending schools in districts that volunteered to take them.
Now, open enrollment will expand to theoretically hundreds of thousands of children. And all districts with space for more students will be required to accept children from the worst schools, based on a lottery system.
Romero sold open enrollment as a civil rights issue, providing families stuck in failing schools the right to a good education. And she’s right.
- How would be reimbursement work? Would the full tuition follow the student to the receiving district, or would it be partial? Would the sending district get the tuition for one more year after the student leaves, to soften the impact, as currently happens in declining enrollment dsitricts?
- Could a district claim financial hardship and deny an out-of-district admission? How would that be defined?
- What is the definition of available space? If a school technically has room for more students, but has limits on class size, would it have to abandon small classes to accommodate more students? Or reopen closed schools?
- Would largely wealthy basic-aid districts, like Palo Alto and Woodside,