Latinos and Asians Rise in School Enrollment

Latino and Asian enrollment in the Long Beach Unified School District is continuing to grow gradually, according to a survey by district officials.

The survey, conducted each year to plot the district’s racial and ethnic makeup, showed that 39.6% of the district’s 64,000 students are white, down slightly from last year’s 41.5%.

In contrast, Latino students constituted 23.7% of total enrollment--a gain of 1.1% from last year’s percentage, and Asian students (including those from Pacific Islands and the Philippines) made up 16.9%, up 1.4% from last year’s figure.

Blacks, on the other hand, showed a decrease in their enrollment percentage--from 19.9% to 19.3%--for the first time since 1966. And American Indians posted the identical enrollment percentage--0.5%--as last year’s.

District officials have attributed the increasing Latino and Asian enrollment primarily to continuing immigration into the Southern California area. And while birth rates among white, middle-class families have shown a steady decline, they say, birth rates among the ethnic newcomers have tended to remain constant.

“There was nothing surprising in these findings,” district spokesman Richard Van der Laan said of the survey, adding that white students have comprised less than half of the district’s enrollment since 1981.

But the trend has been a major departure from 1966--the first year the racial and ethnic survey was taken--when white students comprised 87.1% of enrollment, with Latinos, Asians and blacks comprising 4.5%, 2.1% and 6.2%, respectively.

Van der Laan said the district’s only concern regarding the new increased enrollment of ethnic minorities is the increasing number of students entering the district with limited or no English skills. Such students now make up about one-sixth of the total enrollment. The district plans to conduct another survey in April to update that figure, Van der Laan said.