IRVINE : High Schools to Reject Students Not Living in City

The city’s three high schools will no longer accept students from outside the Irvine Unified School District, part of a new policy beginning this fall that will limit transfers throughout the school system due to lack of space.

Enrollment projections in the 21,700-student school district show a steady increase in the number of students at the three high schools. A fourth high school in north Irvine is not set to open until fall, 1998.

Acting Supt. Dean Waldfogel said the enrollment squeeze at the high-school level is part of the district’s current growth pattern.

“We have a bulge of middle school students coming through the system that will result in very crowded high schools over the next three years,” Waldfogel said. “This always happens to us before we open a new school.”

Irvine and Woodbridge high schools also will limit transfers from students within the school district who wish to attend a high school outside their neighborhood boundaries.

In the past, students living outside the district were guaranteed a place in Irvine schools if their parents worked in the city. But beginning last year, the district stopped ensuring such slots through high school.

A limited number of elementary and middle school students from outside the district will be granted space in some Irvine schools on a year-to-year basis, said Corinne Loskot, district coordinator of facilities planning.

About 400 students who live outside the district are now attending Irvine schools.

The enrollment policy changes are not expected to affect current transfer students who were previously guaranteed enrollment through high school.