School Suffers Budget Cuts for High White Student Percentage

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By Kody Fairfield

Outrage has grown at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, as the school faces layoffs and increased class sizes due to a law limiting funds for schools with a higher white student body, reports ABC7.

According to the report by ABC7, the Los Angeles Unified School District offers additional funding to schools whose percentage of white students is under 30 percent, a number that the school district explained to parents, had been passed in the last couple years.

The racial formula was a condition imposed by court decisions dealing with desegregation in the 1970s, reported ABC7.

ABC7 explained that the letter home did not assuage the parents’ outrage at the condition.

“When your class sizes are getting larger and you’re taking resources away from students, I mean ss parents, you do want your kid to go out to college,” one parent, Rosemary Estrada, said.

In an attempt to lessen the budget cuts, the district changed the school’s spending formula to one based on the number of students, says ABC7.

“Thankfully we’re going to keep our librarian. We’re going to keep our nurse, but we may lose a few teachers, but not as many as we once thought,” said Sheila Edmiston, one student’s parent.

Several jobs will still be lost and class sizes could grow. For many parents, the race-based reason of “too many white students” has made the cuts more difficult to swallow, said ABC7.

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