District to District: examining equity in the District of Choice program

The District of Choice bill died Aug. 11 due to its alleged worsening of socioeconomic and racial inequalities.

“[The DOC program] exacerbates the unequal system of haves-and-have-nots in our public schools and that the most disadvantaged schools and the students they serve get left behind,” Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, wrote in a rare statement on this topic to ABC 7.

Gonzalez chairs the Appropriations Committee and was responsible for suspending SB 1432. She is not alone. Others also discount the program as not being inclusive of minority students.

“[The DOC program] is going to harm students of color and students that are most in need … this is in violation to our constitutional promise under the 14th amendment,”  Chauncee Smith, a legislative advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union of California, said at a June assembly hearing.

What the numbers say about racial inequity

The lack of oversight for the DOC program makes Gonzalez’ and others’ claims difficult to confirm or deny.

According to Kenneth Kapphahn, an analyst at the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the LAO didn’t even know how many Districts of Choice existed in California when they began preparing their report in 2015.

As part of the program’s last full reauthorization, Districts of Choice were required to send information regarding the demographics of DOC students to the California Department of Education, Dr. Danny Kim, the director of pupil personnel at Walnut Valley Unified School District, said.

According to Oak Park Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Tony Knight, OPUSD sent reports about the DOC program every year directly to the CDE.

However, Debbie Look, a legislative representative for the Department of Education, said that no reports were ever received.

“We never received any funding to staff this program, so no one ever called out to Districts of Choice and no district ever notified us that they were DOC, so we had no idea even to call to request those reports,” Look said.

Even at the county level, the information could not be found. When the Talon requested records sent from Districts of Choice to the LA County Office of Education, no records were ever reportedly sent in.

Some rural districts sent information to the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System, an online reporting system for districts.

“There is a place in CALPADS to enter information about the DOC report … so the failure of oversight and monitoring the program is squarely on the CDE and the Department of Finance,” Shoreline Unified School District Superintendent Bob Raines said.

Furthermore, students who transfer using the DOC program aren’t required to give information regarding their race or socioeconomic background to their district of residence. Information about students in the DOC program is only compiled by the Districts of Choice, which makes it difficult for districts of residence to gather accurate data on the demographics of the students who left.

In some cases, DOC districts and districts of residence have compiled and reported vastly different demographic data on transfer students.

“Of the DOC applicants approved to attend Glendora Unified School District this coming year … 14 percent are Hispanic, while 71 percent are white, not Hispanic, despite a high concentration of Hispanic students,” Duarte Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Allan Mucerino wrote in a letter of opposition.

Mucerino’s statistics came from nine of the 33 school districts that feed into Glendora USD.

In contrast, Glendora USD Superintendent Dr. Robert Voors wrote in an email that 53.9 percent of Glendora’s total DOC student population is Hispanic.

“I have not seen the Duarte USD letter … , in which they claim Glendora has only accepted 14 percent Hispanic student from nine specific school districts,” Voors wrote. “I can’t speculate what the purpose was in using only nine of the 33 school district’s data to get that statistic. It comes across as intentionally misleading and in my opinion, a dishonest representation of our DOC population, since 54 percent of our DOC students are Hispanic.”

More locally, OPUSD’s own data collection doesn’t yet account for the demographics of DOC students.

According to data OPUSD employee Cliff Moore sent to state Sen. Bob Huff, R-San Dimas, OPUSD’s Hispanic population has increased from 7.4 percent to 9.1 percent due to out-of-district students. However, this number includes DOC students as well as inter-district transfer students and students whose parents work for the district.

What the numbers leave out: the marketing methods of Districts of Choice

Despite the discrepancies between these districts, some existing data may indeed point to inequalities inherent in the execution of the overall DOC program.

“Some of the home districts raise the concern of race and ethnicities of students who left,”  Kappahan said. “They felt that the students who left were not representative of their district’s population.”

The LAO reported differences in ethnic diversity between DOC students and those attending their districts of residence.

“It seems that overall students who transfer into the program are more likely to be white or Asian than their home districts and less likely to be Hispanic/Latino,” Kappahan said.

According to the LAO report, Hispanic students account for 66 percent of the students attending districts of residence but only 32 percent of DOC participants.

“This program, while perhaps intended to give choice, has had the increased impact of segregation within our district … we are left with segregated schools,” Dr. Linda Kaminski, the superintendent of Azusa Unified School District, said in her testimony to the Assembly Committee on Education.

The LAO also reported differences in socioeconomic status between DOC transfer students and those who stay in their home districts.

The statewide average for low income students is around 62.5 percent, but DOC districts tend to have significantly lower percentages of low-income students than the state, according to the LAO. About one-in-four students who utilized the program are classified as low income — an average of approximately 27 percent.

Demographic data from Azusa USD and Glendora USD seems to show a similar gap, although the data differs between the districts.

“Only 12 percent of students that transfer out of the [Azusa School] District via DOC are identified as low-income, whereas 82 percent of the total district is identified as low income,” Kaminski wrote in the same letter of opposition.

Glendora said that, of 504 DOC students from Azusa, 185 students had access to free and reduced-price lunches — 36.7 percent of DOC students. Use of free and reduced-price meals is used by legislators and school administrators to determine the school’s population of low-income students.

“[Low-income students] transfer out of their districts at significantly lower rates in comparison to their demographic group in their districts,” Smith wrote in an opposition letter sent from the ACLU.

Often, the demographics of DOC participants mirror those of their chosen district.

In 2009, Rowland USD calculated that, based on 727 DOC students leaving their district, 52 percent were Asian, while 20 percent were Hispanic. In WVUSD, a popular destination for Rowland’s DOC students, 57.3 percent of its resident students are Asian.

Still, those demographics were very different from those of Rowland USD students, of which 60.9 percent were Hispanic and 20.9 percent were Asian.

This gap can widen in rural districts such as those in Kern County. According to the seven Districts of Choice within Kern county — a rural county in central California — data suggests a difference between students admitted on free and reduced-price lunches on DOC and free and reduced-price lunches in the district of residence.

In Maple Unified School District, for example, only 30.3 percent of admitted DOC students were on free and reduced-price lunches while the district of residence, Wasco USD, had a total of 88.9 percent of their students on free and reduced-price lunches.

“The law says that this program should not encourage unequal demograph

ics and when we collected the information we were not sure why there was a large difference between Hispanics and free and reduced students with districts of residence and Districts of Choice,” Mike Hulsizer, chief deputy for governmental affairs at the Kern County Office of Education, said.

These numbers may not tell the whole story, however.

“One possible reason that there is a difference between certain ethnicities and economic levels is that the information provided by some of the DOC programs was in English-only and Spanish speaking families provided no comparable information in their language on the programs,” Hulsizer wrote in an email.

Shoreline Unified School District, a district surrounded by dairy farms where first generation Americans and immigrants come to work, utilizes word-of-mouth to inform parents and students about their program.

“In practice, it is about word-of-mouth on the soccer field and people talking in the neighborhood and that’s because they talk,” Raines said.

Shoreline used to advertise in the newspaper until a few years ago.

“We don’t go out and do overt advertising because there were accusations that some docs were trying to attract certain demographic,” Raines said. “So we won’t do any outreach.”

A Talon investigation found that, of the four largest districts of choice, only one of the districts had FAQs and applications readily available in Spanish and English. All other information was solely referenced in English.

If 15 percent or more of pupils enrolled in a public school speak a single primary language other than English, all notices, reports, statements, or records sent to parents must be written in the primary language, according to Education Code 48985.

However, this code does not apply to out-of-district families who may be interested in pursuing the DOC program in the future.

One way to solve the inequality issue: the transportation amendment

As an amendment to the original bill, school districts would need to provide free transportation to students on free and reduced-price meal plans, and who live between two and 10 miles from the school. The new requirement would take effect in the year 2020, giving school districts some time to implement it.

“Politicians saw evidence in one our districts, Pond USD specifically, that transportation would be a good idea to increase minorities in this program,” Hulsizer said.

Surrounded by almond groves, Pond Unified School District, a rural school district, utilizes two public buses to transport many of their rural and out-of-district students. Pond is one of the few DOC districts that enrolls a higher percentage of low-income and Hispanic students in its district than live in the districts of residence.

“About the only way to get a demographic equal from the district of residence is busing … and there has always been a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ of ‘this is my district and this is yours’ between local superintendents,” McKittrick Elementary Superintendent Barry Koerner said.

McKittrick is another small rural district that enrolls less than 80 kids — more than 50 of them are DOC students.

Superintendents usually do not interfere with transportation in other districts as it creates unwanted tension, Koerner said.

Other school districts, like Walnut Valley Unified, have expressed reservations about the transportation amendment.

“We found [the amendment] problematic on an implementation scale because we are driving into local school districts that are already not favorable with DOC and picking them up and driving them back to our district,” Kim said.

Another part of the problem is the cost of transporting students — a cost which the school district must cover. According to Koerner, districts may end up using funding designed for high-needs students to pay for transportation.

Furthermore, the extended time allotted for implementing the transportation amendment won’t help DOC students in the meantime.

“The phase-in component of transportation was three years in and provides a significant delay in which students that are low income are still separated and creating an inequitable student population,” Smith said.

While the LAO recently produced a report on public transportation, no research has been conducted to see the possible effects it could have on participation in the DOC program.

“I think everyone is making assumptions that busing will increase participation, especially of Hispanic and ‘EL’ learners and underrepresented students,” Pond USD Superintendent Frank Ohnesorgen said, “but that’s a huge leap to make with no data or information.”