Open Enrollment Wins Favorable Rating: ‘It’s Nice to Have a Choice’

Orange County residents overwhelmingly favor a controversial proposal to allow children to attend any public school their parents choose rather than being restricted to a particular neighborhood school or school district.

The concept, known as “open enrollment,” is being considered in Sacramento and endorsed nationally by President Bush and others who argue that if schools had to compete for students, they would all be forced to improve. Opponents say it would never work.

In a poll conducted Aug. 6-8 for the Times Orange County Edition, 62% said they favored “open enrollment” and 31% opposed it.

“Sometimes parents want to have open enrollment because of dissatisfaction with a particular school, or because they want their kid to have a fresh start,” said Chris Forehan, a parent whose children attend schools in the Los Alamitos Unified School District. “That’s neat for a kid to have a fresh start. It’s nice to have a choice.”

Forehan is also the principal of the Walnut Elementary School in the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District, which has open enrollment, and there is a waiting list of students who want to transfer to his school.

“It keeps us on our toes too, as educators, to provide the very best program possible,” he said. Sometimes parents transfer their children because of problems at one school that can be corrected through a change in environment, he said. Other times parents are attracted to a school because perhaps it has gained a reputation for its strengths in areas such as art, literature or writing, he said.

Open enrollment was favored by a higher margin by residents of central Orange County compared to South County respondents. While 69% of respondents living in the central county area favored open enrollment, only 55% of South County respondents agreed.

Jerome Thornsley, superintendent of Capistrano Unified School District, said the findings in the poll conducted by Mark Baldassare & Associates of Irvine may indicate that more people in the South County are satisfied with their schools. But even if open enrollment were allowed anywhere in Orange County, Thornsley said, “probably 90% would still go to the school in their own neighborhoods.”

Open enrollment is being used in several school districts throughout the state and in most Orange County school districts. Irvine Unified and Santa Ana Unified are two districts that allow inter-district transfers, when space at each school permits.

A state law that expires next June allows parents to enroll their children in a school near their place of work even if it is in another school district.

While parents overwhelmingly favor open enrollment, many Orange County school administrators said they oppose it.

“I think people always like to have choices,” said Cynthia Grennan, superintendent of the Anaheim Union High School District. “I don’t think parents and legislators are as realistic about the problems that can come up.”

She and other educators cite as one potential problem the competition among schools for the best athletes. Critics also say open enrollment could upset racial balance at schools and that the choice will really only belong to wealthy families, because the parents of poor children do not have the means to send their children across their town or county to a better school.

“In my opinion, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Garden Grove Unified Supt. Ed Dundon said of parents who favor open enrollment. “All that’s going to do is to make schools even more segregated. Those who can afford to do whatever they perceive is the best thing can, and will, do it.

“The idea of attendance boundaries and district boundaries has a meaningful organizational basis,” he said. “If people can cross this district line, I don’t see how you can have any order, or any racial balance or any athletic eligibility rules.

“We can have one gigantic race to prove that one school is better than another, but to my mind, it will make any inequity that exists among the schools tremendously greater.”

Two state legislative bills proposing open enrollment have languished in committees. But state Supt. of Schools Bill Honig vowed to renew the push for open enrollment.

“I think it will improve education,” Honig said. “It’s the same as businesses competing for customers. What better way to improve schools than to give parents a choice?”

And Honig said there are ways to resolve the educators’ concerns over equity and segregation through what he called “limited choice.” His plan would allow only 1% of the school population to be from outside its attendance boundaries, and “we wouldn’t mess around with racial integration or academic and athletic stars.”

He said in school districts that have open enrollment, only about 5% of the enrollment is from another attendance area.

“Even if a lot of people aren’t going to take advantage of it, then why not give them choice anyway?” he said. “The secret is, if we give it to them, and they don’t utilize it, they feel good that they have it.”

OPEN ENROLLMENT

“Do you favor or oppose legislation that would allow parents to send their children to any California public school they choose?”

Favor Oppose Don’t Know Total 62% 31% 7% Have schoolchild 66 28 6 No schoolchild 60 32 8 By Age 18-34 66 27 7 35-54 61 33 6 55+ 55 36 9 By Region North 62 30 8 West 62 28 10 Central 69 25 6 South 55 40 5

Note: Results may not add up to 100% because of rounding.

Source: Times Orange County Poll