On Friday, Sept. 15, Atwater Avenue Elementary school parents and students learned that three teachers could have to leave the school more than a month into the academic year.
The shuffling was a result of “Norm Day,” a longstanding student tallying practice that’s rankled parents and educators for decades.
“I'm a huge supporter and proponent of my kids going to public school, but frankly policies like Norm Day make the public school system in L.A. feel a bit unstable,” said Daniel Addelson, who has two children at the Atwater Village school.
If a school has fewer students enrolled than previously expected, teachers can be displaced and classes are re-arranged.
“Norm Day strikes fear in the heart of administrators,” said LAUSD Board Member Scott Schmerelson, a former middle school principal at L.A. schools for more than a decade. He now represents the West San Fernando Valley and North Hollywood.
LAUSD has yet to provide the district-wide totals from this year’s Norm Day count, though the results have reshaped some schools over the last few months.
But as Atwater Avenue Elementary School families learned, the initial consequences of the Norm Day count are not always final. The district can retain teachers even when their enrollment falls below expected levels.
The way schools count students is deceptively complicated and has tangible consequences.
California funds schools based on how many students, on average, show up in the classroom each day. This calculation is called average daily enrollment.
“The school has to have a seat for every child who's enrolled whether they're paid for it or not,” said USC education professor Lawrence Picus. “It seems that we have a responsibility to ensure they have enough money to do that.”
Every year, the Los Angeles Unified School District estimates how many students will show up at its more than a thousand schools when the academic year starts in August. Those estimates are the basis for how many administrators, educators, and other staff each school employs.
California’s education code, the teacher’s union contract, and district policy influence class size and as a result, how many educators are hired. There are financial penalties for schools that exceed the maximum class sizes defined in the education code.
Class size is also shaped by other factors, including whether the school has predominantly students of color, the types of programs offered and grade level. For example, California requires one adult for every 12 students in transitional kindergarten classes.
LAUSD recalibrates its enrollment on the fifth Friday of the school year, Norm Day. This year it was Sept. 15. Other districts, including Long Beach and San Bernardino City, typically adjust their staffing earlier in the school year.
An LAUSD district spokesperson wrote in a statement that “five weeks allows schools sufficient time to enroll students for an optimal capture.”
Though that explanation eludes even longtime educators like Schmerelson, who told LAist in October that he couldn’t explain the Norm Day timing — “I don't know the answer and I won't make one up,” Schmerelson said.
School districts also report their enrollment to the California Department of Education on “Census Day”— the first Wednesday in October. If they overestimated their enrollment, that means they’ll have more staff than they have funding for — which means layoffs or reassignments.
I'm a huge supporter and proponent of my kids going to public school, but frankly policies like Norm Day make the public school system in L.A. feel a bit unstable.
Ahead of the Norm Day count, some schools scramble to enroll more children to keep teachers in their classrooms. Just a few students can make the difference between retaining and releasing an educator.
Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said in a statement last year that while “crucial,” Norm Day brings upheaval to some schools.
“The process is not community centric, student centric, or teacher centric,” Carvalho said. “There is a better way to conduct a student count and implement its results in a way that adjusts for the movement of teachers, reflects the ongoing trends of schools and better allocates resources to address community needs prior to the start of a school year.”
A spokesperson wrote in a statement after this story was published that the district is helping schools retain would-be displaced teachers with additional funding, but did not provide details.
In early September, a colorful flier posted to Atwater Avenue Elementary’s online message board advertised the school was still enrolling students. The caption was more dire. “We are still UNDER-ENROLLED and at risk of displacing TWO teachers… Please help us by getting the word out.”
On Friday, Sept.15, Principal Jorge Ríos told parents that two teachers would lose their jobs at the school. A third position on the chopping block would be funded with money originally designated for teaching assistants, but two third grade dual-language educators couldn’t be spared.
“At the gates of the front of the school, there's just kid after kid coming out and they were in tears,” Addelson said of that day’s pick-up. “They had lost a teacher and a role model that was important to them.”
One of them was his 8-year-old daughter Eliot who said goodbye to a teacher she described as “really nice” and “really helpful.”
“If there was a problem at recess she would talk about it,” Eliot said. “She would try to, like, resolve it so no one else in the class has that same problem.”
A group of parents spent the weekend brainstorming how to retain their school’s educators.
Neighborhood families advocated for the start of their school’s dual language Spanish program in 2017. Parents also spoke out in 2019 against the displacement of Ríos himself. The administrator ultimately stayed at the school.
“I immediately went into research mode,” said parent Kirstin Eggers. “I went deep into the L.A. Unified paperwork, contracts, and all of this information online.”
Other parents started pleading the school’s case in an online petition, through comments on the superintendent’s social media posts, and by contacting district officials, their school board representative Jackie Goldberg’s office, and journalists.
Norm Day outcomes have been altered before.
LAUSD gave schools more flexibility in their staffing in 2020 and allowed them to use money from the previous year and a one-time fund to save teaching positions that would have otherwise been cut after Norm Day.
Meanwhile, Addelson's daughter Eliot was assigned a new teacher, who formerly taught second grade, while some of her peers were moved into classes that combined third and fourth grade.
An LAUSD administrator with knowledge of the situation said school and district leaders were already working to mitigate the displacement of teachers when families reached out.
“When we hear from parents we always like to be responsive to them,” the administrator said.
But for parents, it was unclear what resources were available to retain beloved educators.
“It was just so hard to, like, work at something and just not feel like anybody was listening to us,” said parent Lori Rosales. The former parent teacher association president stepped in to help coordinate the families’ response.
Ultimately, the Region West Superintendent’s office provided an undisclosed amount of funding to fund one of the third-grade dual language teacher positions and the school funded another according to a district spokesperson.
[Parents] do have a really big voice in public education, and we can, we can use it wisely.
In her third classroom configuration of the year, Eliot was reunited with her best friend.
“I'm learning a lot more than I learned in second grade,” Eliot said. Her recent homework included practicing spelling words like sharks, carnivores, forward, and arctic.
Her dad, and other parents, are still wary of future disruptions.
“When Eliot goes to fourth grade, I don't want to have to wonder, 'Is she going to lose her teacher five weeks or six weeks into the school year again?” Addelson said.
Kirstin Eggers’ son was among the handful of third grade students who remained in a combined fourth grade classroom even after the school restored two teachers.
“I feel like his world got very small,” Eggers said. “And yet he's also overcrowded. It kind of feels like the worst of both worlds right now. I'm trying to be patient, but it's difficult to hear.”
Eggers said the experience has her rethinking how she volunteers her time engaged with her son’s education.
“I feel really ingrained and really interested in the numbers aspect of this and the policy aspect of this,” Eggers said. “That has kind of awakened in me being an extreme advocate.”
Social media: Parents posted about the situation at the school and asked for a resolution on the superintendent’s public posts.
District administration: Parents met with the school’s principal and the district’s regional leadership responsible for the schools in their area. LAUSD is divided into four regions— north, south, east, and west— and the contact information for the office of each regional superintendent is online.
Online petition: Online petitions do not force a school district to act in the same way that collecting signatures for a ballot proposition legally mandates a vote on a policy. Instead, online petitions can help quantify a community’s collective support and explain the impact of the district’s action on families.
“[Parents] do have a really big voice in public education, and we can, we can use it wisely,” said former parent teacher association president Lori Rosales.
