L.A. parents shocked as demographic shift leads to teacher cuts

LOS ANGELES — After volunteering at her children’s Los Angeles middle school for nearly a decade, Carol Convey was told the number of teachers suddenly would be cut.

The problem? The school now had too many white students.

To Convey, the diverse, multiethnic community looked no different from before, so she began to wonder whether her neighbors had changed, or only how they identified on paper.

The question has sparked a lively debate in the country’s secondlargest school district, which under a decades-old court settlement aimed at desegregation provides additional staffing when more than 70 percent of students hailing from the surrounding neighborhood are not white.

Across the country, school districts have long grappled with desegregation and pursued a range of policies including changing boundaries, opening magnet schools and focusing resources on campuses with nonwhite students.

In Los Angeles, parents were shocked earlier this year when they learned that Walter Reed Middle School in Studio City — known for its honors program, specialized learning academies and diverse student body of 1,600 — would no longer qualify for the additional staffing because of an uptick in its white-student enrollment.

But some parents doubt there is much change, adding they have friends who didn’t put down their children’s heritage on school forms, fearing they could be labeled English learners and subjected to additional testing.

Now, these parents are being encouraged to change how they answered questions about their children’s race and ethnicity — and Convey said more than a dozen people have voiced interest in doing so.

The discussion underscores the critical role race plays in education decisions even though the questionnaires used to determine identity often feel inadequate or confusing to those filling them out.

It also suggests that some parents answer the forms based on what they think will most help their children.

About three-quarters of Los Angeles Unified’s students are Latino, and fewer than 10 percent identify as white, according to district data.

As a result, the majority of Los Angeles Unified schools today — 88 percent — receive the additional staffing to keep classes smaller, district statistics show.

Every year, a handful of schools lose or gain staffing when their demographics shift.

In response to the Walter Reed parents’ uproar, the district has rejiggered funding to save all but one of the teachers the school would have lost because of the data shift, said Greg McNair, the district’s chief business and compliance counsel.