tiggiwinkle

Hello everyone . Hopefully there's some one out there who can help me.

I am moving to San Diego with my hubby and 12 year old daughter.

My question is, I tried to enrol her in a school which we considered to be a good school, but we have just been told that they are not taking on any more 8th graders. I have looked again and seem to have settled on John Muir school which is K-12 and also states its a "magnet"school.


What does all this mean? and can I enrol her there as a second choice?


Thanks in advance for any help


Tiggiwinkle

Sue

Hi Tiggiwinkle,

Welcome to BE. I hope you enjoy your stay with us

You've certainly come to the right place, we have a few members in that area and I'm sure they will be along shortly to share some tips and pointers. In the meantime take some time to read through the other threads in the forum and get to know everyone.

If you get stuck on anything on the site please do not hesitate to give me a shout. Happy to help.

Michael

The school that a child is assigned is based on your street address and without one, you can't enroll your child in the school. Each school has an area map that includes all the streets that are assigned to that school. Occasionally a school in your area is full and the child will be assigned another school in the school district for that school year.

The following is a map of the schools around the San Diego area with their rankings. If you click on a symbol, you should get more information about that school.

http://schoolperformancemaps.com/ca/...63789%2C12%2C1

If a school is high ranking in an area of lower ranking schools, some parents use every trick (possibly using grandparents or relatives address) to try get their child enrolled in that school and that could possibly be a "magnet school". Although the property is supposed to be owned or rented in the parents name and utility bills are supposed to be in the parents name, a child will be admitted if the child actually lives at that address.

Schools are funded on the local (property taxes), state, and federal level. In California, rich school districts (districts that have property taxes that can fund schools at 100% or more), get minimum support from state and federal governments (less than 10% of the cost) but poor school districts my be funded at more than 50% from the state and federal governments. However even with the difference in funding, rich school districts likely spend nearly double per child as the poorest school districts.

AmerLisa

You can get interdistrict transfers to a school of your choice. However, they usually start those in Feburary, so you may be out of luck because the district may not consider it.

Is there a chance of moving to that particular catchment area for that particular school?

Michael

That depends on whether both school districts agree. The school district that loses the student also loses federal and state money for that student (significant amount of a poorer school district) and the receiving school district generally will only get the same amount of money from the state and federal governments as other students in that district (very little money if it is a rich school district).

In the bay area, I seldom heard of that occurring except in the case of where the poorer school district has too many students (over crowding) and the richer school district has too many vacancies. Usually the poorer school district loses quite a bit of aid and doesn't want to pay the richer school district the property taxes for that student and the richer school district is spending more property tax dollars to educate that student. Unless there is a very large amount of vacancies in the richer school district, usually parents in that district would rather have smaller classes or lay off a few teachers than fill all the classes mostly at the expense of the richer school district.

http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/di/fq/districttransfers.asp

California Education Code sections 46600–46601 permits parents/guardians to request an interdistrict transfer/reciprocal agreement. The fundamental basis for this provision is the signing of an agreement between districts. Interdistrict transfer/reciprocal agreement must be approved by both the student’s original district of residence and the district to which the student seeks to transfer to. Both districts must approve the agreement before it becomes valid. The agreement may extend for a maximum of five consecutive years and may include terms or conditions. It is within the authority of either the home district or the receiving district to revoke an interdistrict transfer/reciprocal agreement at any time for any reason the local board or district superintendent deems appropriate.

As far as changing to a different catchment area within a school district, that is a little easier but students living in that catchment area have first priority and in some cases (fairly rare), a school district may have different property tax rates for different areas within the school district.

AmerLisa

My mistake, I was confusing an out of district transfer (interdistrict) with an intradistrict transfer.

However, I did read this about the op's school they mentioned:

http://www.sandi.net/site/Default.aspx?PageID=906

Ozzidoc

Magnet school = anyone in the district can apply to send their kid there. Magnet schools have a lot of control how the curriculum is delivered and how the cash is spent.

We live in the 92117 zipcode

What makes you want to send your kid/s to John Muir? Which school was your first choice? Which part of San Diego will you be living and working in?

tiggiwinkle

hello ozzidoc.

Thanks for the explanation, unfortunately we have already been told that John Muir if full for 8 th graders. Not too sure where to look now.

We picked this school because it was a K -12 and thought this would be better for our 12 year old daughter. I seem to be hitting a brick wall with the SDUD,they have been professional but not very forthcoming in information.

We are to live in 92122 district and the neighbourhood school has not got very good reviews, so we would like to get her in somewhere else, but it seems as if you did not submit an application back in feb, then there are "no places". I'm sure this is not the case and I am just not asking the right questions or know about the loop holes.

Any advice for us ozzidoc?

Thanks

Ozzidoc

Hello

Apologies for my late response - crazy week at work!

Our daughter is just three, so we are only starting out on the journey.

Have you considered schools that feed into UTC High? Standley?