Los Angeles : 70% Racial Ratio at Schools

University and Palisades high schools will be allowed to take in more minority students, and thus accommodate more students bused from crowded areas of the city, the Los Angeles school board has voted.

The school board approved up to 70% minority enrollment at the two high schools and the 11 elementary schools elsewhere in the district. Previously, the limit was 60%. Most of the schools affected by Monday’s decision are in the San Fernando Valley.

The board decided to postpone a decision on whether to study changing the racial ratios at more than 100 other schools, including about 25 on the Westside, until after a scheduled vote next week on a districtwide plan to relieve overcrowding. The plan calls for elementary schools to move from the traditional school calendar to a year-round schedule or to double sessions beginning this summer.

Although most of the discussion about overcrowding has focused on elementary schools, which have had the biggest surge in enrollment, the district staff has said that district high schools will be out of space after 1993 if the current growth rate continues.

Changing the racial ratio is “a reflection of the needs of the district” and of a belief by most of the community and school staff that the change “would not make University High School a segregated school,” said Principal Jack Moscowitz. “It’s a realistic evaluation of the number of students in the public school system who fall into minority and non-minority” categories, he said.

About 85% of the 610,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District are black, Latino, Asian or from other minority groups, according to the district.

Currently about 700 students are bused to University High School from crowded sections of the city, Moscowitz said. Most of those students are minorities, he said. The school’s total enrollment is 2,100.