This year, Palisades Charter High School admitted more than 300 students from the lottery. Enrollment will remain steady at around 3,000 with an average of 750 students per grade level, the school’s Director of Admissions Chris Lee said, and demographic data is “fairly constant with last year.”
The school will know its final numbers at the beginning of September.
Racial diversity will likely continue to decline at the school, however, as increasing busing costs edge more students out of a charter school education.
In the 2011-12 school year Pali High’s student body was
47 percent white, 25 percent Hispanic and 16 percent African American.
Last year, it was 53 percent white, 22 percent Hispanic and 14 percent African American.
Rich Schmitt/Staff Photographer
Last March, the school was shocked by hate speech graffiti found on the campus.
Pali High students immediately responded by writing messages of love and peace around the campus and held a Unity Rally to celebrate diversity and strength.
The school was recently featured on Newsweek’s list of best public high schools in the nation, ranking 23rd in the state and 164th in the country.
The list looks at 6,477 of the 15,819 public high schools in America and rates them on criteria including test scores, graduation and college enrollment ratios, advanced placement courses and staffing ratios.
The only California high school to make the magazine’s top 10 was Whitney High School in Cerritos.
—ERIKA MARTIN
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
