Parents scramble to meet Dec. 18 school choice decisions
Shirin Parsavand | 12-17-2009 | Comments |
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Parents in Los Angeles often can choose which public school their children will attend, but exercising those choices requires them to get an education themselves.
Ayana Moultrie said she would have started doing research on school options in her Mid-City neighborhood much earlier if she’d known how much time it would take. Like parents around the city, Moultrie has spent hours in recent weeks touring schools and talking to other parents in preparation for a Dec. 18 deadline to apply to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s magnet school program.
“If I had known it was this extensive I would have started a year ago,” she said.
Students in the Los Angeles Unified School District can attend several types of free public schools, including neighborhood schools, charter schools and magnet schools. The district runs 173 magnet school programs under a system that began in the 1970s to promote desegregation. Charter schools are publicly funded, but generally are run independently of the school district and are exempt from most state laws governing public schools.
Making sense of complex system
Los Angeles Unified has a division that provides information on the 161 charter schools within the district. But the schools have different application processes and deadlines, so parents must do their own research. For its magnet schools, the district sends out a detailed brochure each year and some schools offer sessions explaining how to apply.
Despite these efforts, magnet school myths abound, including that the schools charge money or only admit top students, according to Kyle Hunsberger and Rustum Jacob, teachers at Cochran Middle School in the Mid-City neighborhood. Hunsberger and Jacob, along with fellow Cochran teacher Don Luong, run the Web site Hope Change Choices (http://hcc.hunsbergermath.com/) to help students and their families find out about their public school options.
Hunsberger and Jacob said they knew little about magnet schools five years ago when they began teaching at Cochran. Jacob said he originally thought they were only for honors students. He learned more a couple of years ago from a blog that was then on the Los Angeles Times Web site, which ran items on the magnet schools from writer and performer Sandra Tsing Loh. (Loh has her own Web site on the city’s magnet schools, http://askamagnetyenta.wordpress.com/.)
Now the teachers tell students about the magnet school program, answer questions on how to fill out the application form and make calls to nearby public library branches to make sure they have the district’s Choices brochures on hand.
They let students know that if they want to go to a magnet high school they should begin applying to middle school magnets as sixth-graders – and pick a popular school. That’s because students rack up points for each year of rejection from a magnet school, for up to three years. More points mean a better chance of getting into a sought-after school.
Above: Session on applying to an LA magnet school
Dispelling myths about magnet schools
Jacob and Hunsberger put together a series of playful videos to show in classes that explain the application process and dispel magnet school myths. These videos and other information about the city’s magnet schools, charter schools and open enrollment schools are now on the Hope Change Choices sites.
One of the videos says magnet high schools have extra trips, elective courses and a “culture of achievement and success.” Some teachers at traditional schools like Cochran, where test scores are below the state target but have been rising, might object to that last distinction. Hunsberger said Cochran teachers are dedicated to helping their students and he wants students to remain there. But at the same time, students should know what’s available to them, he said.
“I don’t think we ought to get our students by hiding information from them,” he said.
Parents are hungry for the information, judging by the attendance at a magnet school fair that teachers at Cochran put together last month, in collaboration with Los Angeles Unified’s Local District 3. Several hundred parents attended the fair, where representatives of about 30 magnet schools attended.
Magnet schools often do have higher achievement levels than the district’s traditional schools. Several of the district’s magnet high schools, including the Orthopaedic Hospital Medical Magnet in South Los Angeles, were among 110 California high schools that earned recognition last week from U.S. News & World Report. The magazine ranks high schools based on student test performance and preparation for college.
Considering school choices early
Although the teachers behind Hope Change Choices focus on helping students get into the high school of their choice, many parents seek out public school alternatives for their children beginning in elementary school.
During a session earlier this month at Crescent Heights Language Arts/Social Justice Magnet School, Moultrie and about 20 other parents heard about the school’s theme and got tips on filling out the magnet school application.
Moultrie said she planned to apply to another nearby magnet school, Baldwin Hills, with high scores and a strong music program. That school usually gets more applicants than it can admit, so she is looking at other options as well, including charter and private schools.
Although she doesn’t plan to apply to Crescent Hills for her daughter, she’s glad that she went to the information session, where magnet school coordinator William Lamb gave a detailed explanation of how to fill out and submit the district’s school choices form. The application process, she said, is very confusing.
Parent Kim Anderson agreed that the process is complicated. Her son attends Crescent Heights’ kindergarten, which is not part of the magnet program, and she hopes he can stay there next year as a magnet student.
“It’s not as simple as it used to be,” she said. “When I was young you just went to the school in your neighborhood.”
Crescent Heights’ Principal Cherise Pounders said the fact that parents choose the school brings the advantage of greater parent participation, however.
“For us, the parents who come here are parents who choose to go here,” she said.
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For more information on magnet schools, visit the Los Angeles Unified School District’s eChoices Web page
For more information on charter schools within the Los Angeles Unified School District, visit the district’s Innovation and Charter Schools Division Web page
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Cover photo courtesy of Flickr user rene1956
Tags: baldwin hills cochran middle school crescent heights education los angeles unified school district south los angeles