LAUSD Brings Back Udder Students for Budget
EMILY KONG
Co-Opinions Editor
The current state of our economy leads us to wonder what hasn’t been affected by the devastating budget cuts. As we all know, one of the most important areas that has taken a hard hit is education. After the budget cuts, California has tried just about everything to save money and to survive this economic crisis.
However, one new technique used by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) shows that schools can use up every possible resource, even if it means thinking of students as cash cows.
The LAUSD is now forcing thousands of students who live within their boundary lines, but attend schools elsewhere, to return to their home school district. Regardless of what school the student has decided to attend, these kids must now return to the LAUSD simply because the district is funded for every individual who attends. The LAUSD would be able to make an extra measly $10 a day by bringing back wayward scholar.
Because so much money has been taken away from the LAUSD, the district has been spiraling downward, turning their student’s education and the district’s budget into nothing more than a bottomless hole.
By ordering these students back to their schools, the LAUSD is taking the opportunity to bring back thousands of dollars originally lost in funding.
Since economic times are unpredictable, it is understandable that LAUSD would continue to think of innovative new ways to find money. It is common for school districts to look at every possible revenue source—in this case, it just happens to be students. Despite the plan’s semblance of genius, LAUSD is forgetting the most important factor of all: students are not dollar signs.
One has to think of the repercussions that could follow from forcing these students to leave their school of choice. Just because the district has found some way to bring money back to their district, it seems unfair to ask the students, who probably enjoy being at the school they attend, to give up everything to go back.
Whether or not the LAUSD is able to provide sufficient education and resources to these kids is a non-issue. The problem lies in the conflict between the reason these students have decided to opt for a different school in the first place and the motivations of the LAUSD in taking them away from their preferred schools.
Ambitious students may see opportunities in different schools because those schools have more to offer, such as more rigorous classes or special extracurricular activities, thus resulting in their decision to apply for these permits in the first place.
By forcing them back to their school districts, the academic freedom of thousands of students is stripped away and handed to the LAUSD. The district may see the monetary potential in taking these students back to their own districts, but what they do not see is how they are compromising a young individual’s education and high school experience by choosing only to look at students as walking dollar signs. Education is something that we all choose freely. It should not be chosen for us.
According to an LA Times article, about $51 million would be made through this plan of per-pupil funding, which indeed, does help with the large deficit.
However, treating students as sources of revenue does not make problems go away. Yes, forcing those students to return might ease the deficit, but it also results in a sudden influx of students, which would be difficult to accommodate with their already limited resources. Although they might be able to bring money to the district, bringing the students back to LAUSD would just create more problems.
LAUSD has failed to realize that these kids have found greater educational goals and opportunities for themselves outside of their school district. Education, founded with the student’s best interests in mind, should do exactly that. Maybe they should treat their charges as students, rather than cash cows.