PaliHi Puts 155 Students on Wait List

50 spots to be decided at Thursday night lottery

Palisades Charter High School informed 155 Paul Revere eighth-graders by letter this week that their admission this fall would hinge on the results of a lottery tonight. PaliHi officials said there are only 50 vacant seats. Enrollment for the remaining students is currently uncertain. The school received 964 applications for 764 seats school-wide, according to its records. At an emotional PaliHi governing board meeting Tuesday night, parents of students who received the letters fought back tears and lambasted the school’s newly formalized admissions policy. That policy, which affects only students who do not live in Pacific Palisades, conflicts with years of established practice’and even the school’s own handbook. The current handbook states that students who do not live in the Palisades may attend PaliHi if they attended ‘the feeder school, Paul Revere Middle School, and applied to Pali’ or they applied through the magnet program. But now more than 100 non-Palisades students, including magnet students, may not be able to attend. ‘We sent my son to Paul Revere from a private school with the very clear understanding that enrollment to PaliHi was guaranteed,’ said John Callas, a Santa Monica resident. ‘Now I’m being asked to rip him out of an environment where he has built years of friendships.’ Callas, like many other parents, learned that his son’s admission to Pali was not certain last November. But a letter sent by Pali administrators in January reassured parents when it said ‘based on our current projections, a lottery would only be necessary for students who are not residents or are not currently attending Revere Middle School.’ The sudden change has left students with an insufficient amount of time to apply to other schools, parents say. ‘I give tours at Revere, and I’ve told hundreds of parents that admission to PaliHi was guaranteed,’ said Gwen Tanguay-Bauer, the mother of an eighth-grade Revere student. ‘I’m going to be tarred and feathered on the 11 o’clock news if this isn’t resolved.’ The timing of the letter added insult to injury, parents say. Revere recently hosted a PaliHi recruitment assembly, where Pali cheerleaders spoke glowingly about the high school and encouraged students to attend. Many board members responded to parents concerns and told them that they would try to solve the problem. ‘I just need you to have a little faith,’ said Mary RedClay, a veteran English teacher and board member. ‘We do have a can-do attitude. And we will do everything we can to get these kids in.’ But previous assurances by board members who have no direct control over enrollment practices angered parents. ‘I was here at the meeting in November, and I left being told to sleep tight after the board assured us, ‘Things would be all right,” said Joan Kincaid, the mother of an eighth-grade Revere student. ‘I’m here now because everything is not all right.’ Some board members said they would like to ask accepted students to confirm their intent to enroll. They think that many local students have applied to the school, but without a serious intention to enroll. But the board gave no direction to school administrators to enact any changed course. Admission to PaliHi from Revere has been assured for students for the past 40 years. But Pali officials say that Revere’s rapid growth this decade and persistent LAUSD overcrowding have pushed the school beyond capacity. Administrators have capped enrollment at 2,780 students’up 16 percent since 2002’and resisted pressure from the Los Angeles Unified School District to expand further. For the past two years, LAUSD rejected PaliHi applications for funds because the school refused to build new seats. Administrators say that they want to use additional resources to lower student-teacher ratios and reduce teacher traveling. They argue that increasing enrollment would only exacerbate those problems. Of the projected 764 seats available school-wide, PaliHi has reserved 130 seats that it might not have to fill, said Margaret Evans, assistant principal in charge of enrollment. But the school encourages all students who received letters this week to apply to other schools. As a condition of its charter, PaliHi has reserved 40 percent of its seats for students from severely overcrowded, low-performing schools. But until the last couple of years not all of those seats were filled. This year, LAUSD requests that Pali reserve 80 seats for students from low-performing schools, up from 20 seats last year, Evans said. But not all those seats will necessarily be filled. High test scores at the school have also drawn local students to the school from private schools, school administrators say. The school received 267 applications from local students and it has reserved 50 seats for local residents who might move here before the beginning of next school year. Revere students who live outside Pacific Palisades and its traditional attendance areas learned last November that they were not guaranteed admission to the high school, after the board decided to formalize its admissions policy. According to the board’s November vote, first priority for filling the 764 empty seats was given to applicants from PaliHi’s historical attendance area, including residents of Pacific Palisades, Topanga and areas of Brentwood. Also included are traveling students from PaliHi’s 13 sending high school areas who currently attend Paul Revere. These 13 areas include Belmont, Crenshaw, Dorsey, Fairfax, Fremont, Hamilton, Hollywood, Jefferson, Los Angeles, Manual Arts, Van Nuys, Washington and Santee. But current Revere students who live outside the Palisades and these 13 sending areas, in places like Venice and Santa Monica, were given second priority in admission. Third priority was given to all other applicants. School officials will draw names in Mercer Hall at 6 p.m. today to fill 50 vacant seats at the high school. ————— Reporting by Staff Writer Max Taves. To contact, e-mail reporter@palipost.com or call (310) 454-1321 ext. 28.