Welcome to the Los Angeles Education Examiner, your new source for news on public education in Los Angeles! We will address questions surrounding education in the vast LA region hoping to raise public consciousness about how things-educational matter to everyone here, day to day. We will host stories from other writers, do a weekly news roundup (this week’s was published yesterday) and produce our own original works around LAUSD, our teachers and our schools.
As it happens more public monies and control is exerted by the seven board members of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) from its downtown Los Angeles “Beaudry” headquarters than from across the 110/Harbor Freeway in LA’s City Hall. Join us for considerations ranging from what you need to know about simply “going to school” today, to analysis of why it all matters on a local and statewide level, whether you are student, parent or taxpayer.
The largest school district in California is the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), but the entirety of Los Angeles County (LAC) enrolls nearly two-and-a-half times as many students as attend LAUSD. There are 88 school districts within LAC, ranging in size from one school of 196 pupils (in 2018/19) to the giant LAUSD with over a thousand schools and well over a half-million students. Its largest (Granada Hills Charter High) school alone enrolls nearly 4700 pupils. See figure 1 below to trace LAUSD’s overall enrollment in graded and “traditional” schools (see below for definitions) since 1981. This and all figures can be enlarged by clicking the hyperlinked header or caption.
Enrollment has declined steadily since 2003/04 with a high of 747K students. Current enrollment of approximately 600K approaches that of three decades past.
Many “fingertip facts” about LAUSD can be found here, including a list of municipalities adjacent to Los Angeles that are governed by LAUSD whether in whole or in part. Many different school “types” are listed but the full array is complicated and multidimensional. It is important to understand the extent of the system which includes our own singular, local school.
The most common distinction between school types is simply on the basis of student’s age or grade. Modern schools are differentiated as elementary (ES), middle (MS), and high schools (HS). Within LAUSD some campuses also operate as “Span” schools including a configuration of grades spanning {ES and MS}, {MS and HS} or some combination of all three levels.
In contrast to these “traditional” school types, LAUSD operates a set of “Options” schools according to State of California Education Code (state law pertaining to Education) as “Alternative Schools and Programs of Choice”. These ‘alternative’ schools differ on the basis of curriculum or environmental circumstances affecting students. The terminology is confounding because in 2009 a “Public School Choice” initiative (PSC) was adopted by the LAUSD school board (BOE) addressing school autonomy and management (see below). Thus there are two kinds of school ‘choices’ – ‘functional’ tied to the special needs of students and reflecting different curricula (“alternative”); and ‘operational’ tied to governance and reflecting administrative and managerial differences.
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