"a lot of [mothers] have gotten jobs so they can put their kids in private schools; but those schools are so crowded -- just loaded to the gills"
-- A Woodland Hills real estate agent, 1978
When the LAUSD reluctantly tried to enforce the laws requiring the desegregation of schools, white, middle-class families fled the District. In 1970 half of the students in the school district were white. In 1978, after busing opponents had exhausted their legal appeals allowing the desegregation program to begin, white students were only 29.8% of the student body. In that year alone, 31,000 of them left the district. Some families moved to neighboring school districts while others enrolled in private schools. This mass exodus occurred even though only about five percent of students in the school system were affected by the mandatory busing program.
In the first iteration of the busing plan, parents were provided with the excuse that it was not fair to send their children on a 90-minute bus ride through LA traffic, making them pay the price for segregation. While the expressed sentiment may have been that "no one objects to people being bused here. It's us being bused there," even a shift in the program so that minority students were instead brought into the Valley, did not end the criticism. One black student recalls that "one girl couldn't have us at her house because her dad objected." In this case busing still worked: her classmate told her "'You can't come over, but I'll meet you on the corner.' And we hung out anyway."
When charter schools were established in California, parents were given a new tool for avoiding integration. Before its conversion to a privately operated charter school, Granada Hills High was "one of the highest-achieving schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District". However, some parents criticized the practice of busing students from downtown and the East Valley into "their" school. By separating itself from the LAUSD, Granada eliminated its participation in this program. Today, the school is effectively re-segregated:
Granada is not only segregated based on race. Some students from socioeconomically disadvantaged families and those needing special education services have been pushed out of the charter school. While charter schools were presented as a vehicle for parental choice, this publicly funded private school is the one doing the choosing:
The advent of charter schools also provided a way for parents who had moved their children to private schools to have the government pay for the tuition. This may be a driving factor in the disparities in demographics that can exist when charter schools and district schools share a campus. As an example, when the nationwide chain of charter schools, Citizens of the World, expanded into the west San Fernando Valley, it claimed it would create a school with "a diverse community of students". However, when compared to the student body of the LAUSD's Shirley Avenue Elementary School, with which it shared a campus, the charter school had a much greater percentage of white students:
The white flight Charter School was able to take space from its public school counterpart through PROP-39. Under the rules that the LAUSD chose to use to implement this demand, Shirley had to give up space it used to provide Special Education services, even though it had a greater percentage of students who had disabilities than Citizens of the World. While nearly 88% of the students at the public school were socioeconomically disadvantaged, it still had to give up space used to enhance the education of these children.
Compounding the damage to public school students, Citizens of the World demanded more space than it was entitled to. This meant that while public school children were forced to receive services in closets, the students at the charter school benefited from having extra space. Under state law Citizens of the World was assessed a $34,625.44 penalty for the space they were not utilizing, but they have only paid $4,189.00. Along with 36 other charter schools, they had a portion of these mandatory fees forgiven by Jose' Cole-Gutie'rrez and the Charter School Division without explanation or approval of the LAUSD School Board.
The Lashon Academy is another charter school in the Valley that serves demographic groups that are vastly different from its public school counterparts. This is one of the few cases where the charter school admits it brings in white students from other neighborhoods to use the space in other students' schools. During a public hearing this month about its request to expand onto a private campus, the school's spokeswoman stated that the move would:
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