Open Enrollment Resuscitates LAUSD : Pulse Is Strongest in West Valley, and District Officials Should Try to Find Out Why

Well, the patient has a pulse. That’s good news, the kind that ought to be spread far and wide. Oddly enough, however, this patient appears to be decidedly uncertain about whether to be happy about it, and about whether this little burst of good health should even be analyzed. Go figure.

The patient that has nearly been declared deceased on several occasions is the ailing Los Angeles Unified School District. The pulse--quite a strong one in fact--was found in the west San Fernando Valley, of all places. There, this past week, parents were actually thrilled to hear that their children had gotten spaces inside certain LAUSD schools. Other parents were dismayed, even depressed, to hear that their children had been turned away.

The occasion involved lotteries held at schools such as Sherman Oaks Elementary and other campuses. These schools had received so much interest from parents participating in the district’s fledgling choice/open enrollment program that they had to conduct drawings for the limited number of slots available. One of the happiest moms was Brenda Skelly, depicted here, whose son will attend Sherman Oaks Elementary.

The flood of interest in the campuses with the best reputations is what public school choice is all about. Yet it was completely unexpected in a district as oft-maligned as the LAUSD. Some parents, who earlier had placed their children in private schools, even came flocking back to the much-maligned LAUSD.

But is the LAUSD keeping track of these numbers? Well, no. It ought to do that, and more, such as taking a close look at the schools that parents and students wanted to leave behind. That could help identify problem campuses as well as give the district some much-needed material to boast about. There is much to learn here, and the district officials are a bit too slow out of the blocks in terms of analyzing it.