A LESSON IN MUSICAL CHAIRS : Plagued by an Ever-Shifting Enrollment, Inner City Schools Have Become Revolving Doors, Leaving Teachers Frustrated and Programs in Disarray

AT DORSEY HIGH IN THE CRENSHAW DISTRICT, about 1,100 students--nearly 90% of the enrollment--will either leave or enter some time after the school year begins.

The situation is only a little better at the 1,700-student Bethune Middle School in South-Central Los Angeles, which lost 713 students and gained 513 last school year.

Like most other inner city schools in Los Angeles, Dorsey and Bethune have become revolving doors for students who enroll and leave--often without providing a trace of their whereabouts. Such instability--dubbed “transiency” by administrators--has left teachers frustrated, students constantly playing catch-up with course work and schools losing money, inasmuch as the level of state funding is determined by attendance.

“Transiency has always been one of our monumental problems in the inner city,” said Edith Morris, Bethune’s principal. “It breaks up the continuity of our whole program and it drastically affects test scores because youngsters don’t have any continuity in their education.”

Added Yvonne Noble, principal at Crenshaw High, where the rate of transiency is well above the district average: “It affects the entire program because when our population declines, our funding is cut and we lose teachers. When we lose teachers, we can lose programs.”

Such flux has several causes. Sometimes, students switch schools because of academic or gang-related problems. They also leave when their families move to new neighborhoods or go back to their home countries. Still others become transient when they simply choose to be truant.

Transiency plagues every school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, but inner city schools tend to have the highest rates because they are havens for recent immigrants, apartment dwellers and others who for either economic or social reasons tend to move frequently.

Transiency is expressed as a percentage of the school’s average monthly enrollment. Because the figure includes students who may enroll, leave and then return to the same school twice in the same year, some students may be counted twice. High schools generally report the highest rates and elementary schools the lowest.

The district’s 46% overall transiency rate has gradually increased over the years, though there was a slight drop between the 1991-92 school year and 1992-93. The rates at some schools, however, continue to climb. At Dorsey, the transiency rate jumped from 56% in 1987-88 to 87% five years later. Bethune’s rate also rose from 70% to 77% during the same period, according to the district’s most recent figures.

Said Mike Roe, Bethune’s attendance counselor: “This area is in a tremendous state of change because people are constantly moving to find work or new places to live.”

He added, “We’ve seen a lot of folks, especially black families, move to other areas like Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Bernardino and Riverside. Around 1978, this school was almost totally black. Now, it’s mostly Latino.”

During the last week of October, Bethune lost 20 students. Five of those students went to Mexico; eight moved to other Los Angeles Unified schools; three transferred to other California districts; one student moved to Virginia, and three others went unaccounted for. During the same week, 13 new students enrolled at the school.

Roe said that at the start of the school year, 1,200 of the students who were supposed to attend Bethune didn’t show up.

Roe tracked down most of the missing students, but he still has no idea what happened to 577 of them.

“One of the biggest problems is the tremendous number of kids who go back to another country,” Roe said. “They leave and visit their home countries, but they don’t come back for several weeks and don’t tell anyone at school where they are.”

Many immigrants also move to areas such as South-Central or Watts when they first arrive, then to areas where the population is more stable and where they can find jobs, Roe said.

Olga Martinez, a junior at Dorsey who moved to Los Angeles from Mexico in 1988, provides an example of today’s itinerant student.

She attended Butler Elementary, Muir and Bethune middle schools, then switched back to Muir before moving on to Dorsey. During this time, Martinez said, her family moved five times.

“Sometimes, we moved to different places because we had no money,” she said. “I felt funny moving around because when I went to Bethune, I didn’t know anybody and I didn’t have any friends.”

Martinez also recently spent three weeks of the school year in Mexico because she had to take care of personal matters.

“You miss a lot of things when you go,” she said. “It makes it tougher.”

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Ceola Holmes, 14, attended seven elementary schools and three junior highs before enrolling as a freshman at Dorsey High this fall.

She went to 61st Street, Budlong, 42nd Street, Holmes Avenue and Miller elementary schools in South-Central, along with Taper Avenue Elementary in San Pedro and another elementary in Carson, whose name she can’t remember. She then went to Muir, Gompers and Audubon middle schools before coming to Dorsey.

Holmes paused when asked how long she planned to stay at Dorsey. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be here,” she said.

Like most other students who move from campus to campus, Holmes’ erratic school enrollment is linked to changes in her family life. Although she and her two younger sisters lived mostly with their mother in various places, they also lived periodically with their grandmother in South-Central.

“We had a problem with some neighborhoods or my mom just got tired of someplace,” said Holmes, who now lives with her grandmother.

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Making friends hasn’t been a problem for Holmes, but she said she has had trouble keeping up with her studies because her classes haven’t been consistent. For instance, she enrolled in algebra at Muir Middle School, pre-algebra when she transferred to Gompers and regular math when she went to Audubon.

Still, Holmes shrugged off the constant moving.

“At first, you’re not used to it,” she said. “But then, you just get used to it.”

At Jordan High, where the transiency rate is close to 71%, attendance counselor Eno Otoyo confronts another key factor leading to high transiency rates: truancy.

Every week, Otoyo makes 20 to 25 house visits to try to find out what happened to students who have been absent for more than 10 days. His current list includes the names of 43 students.

He recently met with Paula Barajas to talk about why her 16-year-old son, Jose Corrales, hasn’t been in school for more than a month.

“What is the problem you’re having with Jose?” Otoyo asked Barajas through a Spanish-speaking interpreter.

“He ran away and he’s not coming to school,” Barajas said.

“He has a problem with gangs. Your son is a gang member,” Otoyo said.

Otoyo then turned to Corrales and lectured him about his baggy clothes.

“You can’t dress like a gang member and not get in trouble,” he said. “You’re showing that you don’t really care about your life. But even if you don’t care, your mother cares about you, and you should respect her.”

After Corrales explained that he hadn’t been coming to school because rival gang members on campus were after him, Otoyo agreed to transfer the boy to a different school.

Less than an hour later, Otoyo drove to the neighboring Jordan Downs housing complex to track down 16-year-old Alejandra Garcia, who hadn’t been at school in more than two weeks.

“Good morning, my dear Alejandra. Why aren’t you in school?” Otoyo asked the girl after she appeared at her doorstep with her mother and older brother.

“I got in a fight and I’m afraid to come back,” she said.

“So you’re loafing and staying home--just kicking back,” Otoyo said.

“No, I’ll come tomorrow,” the girl said.

As Otoyo headed back to his car, he saw a group of teen-age boys sitting on a wall between the school and the housing complex. As he walked toward them, they jumped back on campus and began throwing rocks, sticks and a worn cushion over the cement wall at him.

“These are the people you’re trying to help, but they don’t see it that way,” Otoyo said.

“The ones that frustrate me are the ones who are bright and capable,” he said. “That’s when I really get upset.”

During the 1992-93 school year, Jordan High had about 33,500 “non-approved absences,” which amounted to a loss of nearly $600,000 in state funds. The district lost this money because state funding is linked to the number of students who show up at school every day.

Aside from the financial loss, transiency makes it difficult for many schools to simply educate students.

“You barely get to know students, and then they’re gone,” said Tom Nauman, a teacher at Locke High in South-Central. “It’s difficult to plan lessons and (give) long-range assignments because new students keep coming to class.”

Schools also lose textbooks because some students leave school with their books and without providing an address where they can be reached.

“I’ve had students who check in on a Monday and check out three weeks later,” Locke teacher Cynthia Williams said. “We lose a lot of books that way.”

The National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 also found that students who change schools twice by eighth grade are more than twice as likely to drop out of school.

“By the time some kids get to middle school, their skills are so low that they don’t want to come to school,” Roe said. “It’s too embarrassing for them.”

Morris Guzman, a sophomore at Manual Arts High in South-Central, attended four elementary schools and four junior highs before coming to Manual Arts.

It’s difficult for him to remember the names of all the schools, but he’s sure of one thing: He’s sick of moving around.

“It’s pretty hard because some people treat you badly because you come to school and you barely know anybody,” he said. “It’s been hard to keep up in class because every school is so different. Sometimes, I don’t know what’s going on.”

Although there is little educators can do to keep students from moving to new schools, various programs have been initiated to cut back on truancy.

Bethune started an attendance incentive program in which students with perfect attendance get five extra minutes for midmorning nutrition breaks and lunch and can attend the school’s “Perfect Attendance Dance.”

And at Jordan High, Principal Etta McMahan is trying to get every student to learn the school’s alma mater to boost school pride, and possibly attendance.

Realistically, however, McMahan and others at the school know the situation is somewhat beyond their control.

“The problem we’re encountering is so monumental that it’s difficult to do anything,” Otoyo said. “The situation we’re seeing at schools is merely reflecting societal problems.”

High School Transiency Rates

The high rate of central Los Angeles students who don’t finish the school year in the same school is most evident in high schools. Transiency refers to the number of students who either leave or enter a school during the year. It is expressed as a percentage of the school’s average monthly enrollment:

Bell: 32.16 Belmont: 58.32 Crenshaw: 70.26 Dorsey: 86.50 Franklin: 45.64 Fremont: 60.69 Garfield: 46.59 Huntington Park: 58.71 Jefferson: 65.41 Jordan: 70.76 Lincoln: 40.49 Locke: 82.38 Los Angeles: 76.87 Manual Arts: 82.91 Roosevelt: 51.59 South Gate: 36.32 Washington: 72.89 Wilson: 46.63