LAUSD Campaigns for Magnet Program

For the first time, Los Angeles school officials have mailed application brochures describing magnet school classes to the parents of all 650,000 students, perhaps creating even stiffer competition for the limited slots in the much-praised programs, administrators said Friday.

After the $218,000 direct-mail advertising campaign, designed to contact more parents than in the past, applications began pouring into Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters a month before the Jan. 17 application deadline, officials said.

Assistant Supt. Theodore Alexander, who oversees the student integration program, said competition for the coveted spots will now be “as hard or harder” than in previous years. The district, the nation’s second-largest, typically has a waiting list of more than 20,000 students for the 45,000 places in 135 programs.

In the past, brochures explaining the magnet programs--which give students intensive grounding in selected fields from medicine to show business--were sent home with students or given to parents who came to schools to get a copy.

“In many instances in the past, many parents may not have gotten it,” Alexander said of the “Choices” booklet. “It may have been used as a shield against the rain or dropped or who knows what.”

Some school administrators said parents have complained in past years that they’ve missed the application deadline because they never received the brochure.

“It was a missed opportunity for some parents,” said Molly Schroeder, the magnet coordinator at Welby Way Gifted/High Ability magnet in Canoga Park.

Reseda High School Principal Bob Kladifko said parents previously had complained that they were unaware of all the magnet programs offered by the district. He said he has heard no such complaints this year.

This year’s brochure is also smaller, just 11 pages, with short descriptions of each program. In previous years, it ran about 27 pages, with maps, lists and summaries of each school’s programs.

The brochures are also still available to parents at school offices.

When the district tallies the number of applications it receives, school officials may also learn something else about the magnet program: How many parents actually want their children in them. That could provide the most accurate count of demand for the magnets, Alexander said, and the Board of Education could then consider where they might be expanded.

Magnet programs were developed by court order to better integrate city schools during the battle over mandatory busing in the late 1970s, on the theory that they would cut across geographic lines to draw students of all races with common interests and abilities.

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The specialized classes range from a zoological science program at North Hollywood High School, to a Latin American Music program at Belvedere Middle School and a journalism program at Birmingham High. There are also programs that specialize in math and science, as well as centers for highly gifted students who score high on IQ tests.

The district limits enrollment, based on strict ethnic ratios, because of the limited number of classroom seats and to comply with the original court order. Most of the magnets have ratios allowing 70% of the slots to be filled by minority students and 30% by whites.

The district receives special federal and state funds to operate the programs, and principals pick teachers for the faculty.

School officials say it is the voluntary nature of the program that helps make it so successful.

“A magnet is a special kind of school,” Alexander said. “Principals, teachers, parents are all there voluntarily.”