Our School’s Too White? Outraged Parents at Walter Reed Middle School and Others Vow to Lie About Child’s Race to Keep City From Removing Teachers

By Mike Szymanski March 28, 2017

This article was produced in partnership with LA School Report.

White parents who stand to lose teachers and counselors at their neighborhood public school in Los Angeles are changing their ethnic status with LA Unified to get around a district policy that strips extra staff from schools that are more than 30 percent white.

And some Latino parents who fear deportation under the Trump Administration are saying they are white, further imperiling the smaller class sizes guaranteed under a 40-year-old desegregation settlement.

A 1978 legal settlement requires that LA schools with less than 30 percent white students get extra teachers, counselors, and parent-teacher conferences. But each year, a handful of schools lose that status, known as PHBAO (pronounced “fuh-BOW”) — an acronym for “Predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian, or Other.”

Nine schools will lose their PHBAO status this year — six elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school. Five of them are in the Los Angeles suburban San Fernando Valley, three are affiliated charter schools, and six are Title 1…