About 400 Use Fake Addresses in Torrance to Attend Schools : Education: Officials will allow the students discovered in a three-month investigation to finish the year if they obtain permits from their home districts.

Torrance Unified School District investigators have discovered that the district has as many as 400 students who falsified address data so they could attend Torrance schools.

District officials are asking these students to contact their home districts and obtain special permits so they can finish the school year in Torrance, Supt. Edward Richardson said Friday. The students will not be punished for using a false address, officials said.

“Our feeling is that if they can go back and get a permit, we’ll allow them to stay,” Richardson said.

The students will be considered for enrollment next year if they obtain permits and if space can be found for them, Torrance officials said.

Such special permits are granted based on a variety of circumstances, including health and safety reasons or when parents’ after-school child care is situated in Torrance. School officials said they expect quite a few of the students with falsified addresses will apply and receive the permits.

School board President Ann Gallagher said she supports this approach.

“I feel it’s very unfortunate that students are forced to lie about their addresses to get a good education, so I think it’s better that they go through the permit process--I’m not (averse) to that,” she said.

Many of the students live in areas served by the Los Angeles Unified School District and Centinela Valley Union High School District to the east and north of Torrance, school officials said. The Los Angeles district was the single largest source of the “line-jumping” students, they said.

Some out-of-district students and parents told The Times last fall that they faked residency information because they thought that Torrance schools are superior but could not afford to move to the largely middle-class city. Parents also said they worried that gang problems were worsening at their neighborhood schools and thought that their children would be safer in Torrance.

Richardson, asked whether he is flattered by the apparent popularity of Torrance schools, described the phenomenon as “maybe a backhanded compliment.”

The district launched a three-month investigation of non-resident students last fall after a spirited debate about how many of them had falsified addresses to attend city schools. Some teachers blamed out-of-district students for what they described as an increase in discipline problems, a claim district administrators adamantly denied.

In January, two part-time investigators were hired for $6,000 to assist an existing investigator in locating students who live outside the district.

The three men pored over enrollment records, using a computerized list to pinpoint students from different families who gave the same address. They then visited homes and apartments in person to verify whether students lived there.

The investigators’ efforts turned up 300 to 400 out-of-district students, school officials said. The tally included about 40 at West High School, about 50 at Torrance High School, about 40 at Hull Middle School and 29 at Calle Mayor Middle School, Richardson said.

The numbers are still being calculated and a report will be issued to the school board later this year, school officials said.

Neither Richardson nor J. Richard Ducar, administrator of special services, said they were surprised at the results of the probe.

“We’ve never done this before, but we suspected there were quite a few,” Ducar said.

Nearly 30 non-Torrance students were discovered last fall and were asked to leave the district. Some were Latino, stirring suspicions among fellow students that minority students were being targeted. Administrators countered that the “line-jumping” students came from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds.

The students discovered this winter are being allowed to apply for permits because the school year is nearly over, officials said. And they can remain in Torrance next year if they meet permit requirements and there is space in the schools.

“The kids who’ve been here with false addresses--they’re good kids, generally,” Richardson said.

School officials stress that because some schools are overcrowded, out-of-district students may have to move to other Torrance schools.

“Now that we’re being squeezed in terms of some school sites, we want to make sure we have room for Torrance residents,” Ducar said.

Out-of-town students can legally enroll in Torrance schools in two ways. They can obtain special permits with the approval of the Torrance district and their home district, or they can obtain “affidavits of residency,” in which their parents sign a document stating the student is living with a relative in Torrance.

About 1,200 out-of-district students had permission to attend Torrance schools this year, up nearly 30% from two years ago. One reason could be the launching of a year-round calendar in Los Angeles last summer, school officials have speculated.