Beverly Hills Schools to Keep "Adjacents" Enrolled

By Steven Mikulan Thu., Mar. 12 2009 at 8:42 AM

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Call it Scenes from the Classroom Struggle in Beverly Hills. For months the 90210 has been riven by a debate triggered when the city's school system announced that in 2011 it would become a "basic aid" district that funded itself on local taxes instead of state assistance. This meant that the Beverly Hills Unified School District would no longer receive from Sacramento the $6,114 it has been getting for each student enrolled in its schools. In turn, this spelled the end of about 500 special "opportunity permits" given to families living just outside the city limits. (Other permits, not affected by the switch to the basic-aid system, are granted to legacy kids whose grandparents still live in Beverly Hills and pay property taxes there, as well as the children of city employees; some others are granted for racial diversity.)

In February the school board decreed an end to the issuance of all future permitted students but couldn't decide whether to kick out the Beverly Hills-adjacent students who were currently enrolled as soon as the next term ended, or to let them matriculate all the way through the end of high school. The issue grew very ugly very quickly, with parents on both sides passionately holding to their positions. Some resident parents said the "freeloaders" should move into Beverly Hills if they cared so much for its schools, while the parents of adjacents felt their kids were being kicked out of an educational lifeboat.

Tuesday night, however, BHUSD trustees voted to remain all-inclusive for the next few years. Today's L.A. Times reports that because of two state funding initiatives on the upcoming May ballot, whose passage would postpone Beverly Hills' going basic-aid until at least 2015 -- after most of its present permit-students have already graduated. An undeniable civic wound has been self-inflicted, however, and a distinct bitterness promises to linger over the matter.

"Our community is damaged," the Times quotes BHUSD trustee Myra Demeter, "because . . . all the hatred that was latent beneath the surface in Beverly Hills just came to the top."

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Beverly Hills Unified School District, Myra Demeter

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Over 400 Beverly Hills residents support Ms. Demeter�s concern for educating all students in the school system. Her astute business acumen provided a trenchant analysis of how the California�s financial crisis might well prove to be a double-edged sword and supply the school funding needed in Beverly Hills for the foreseeable future. With the savvy help of Myra Lurie, Steven Fenton found a reasonable solution for dissenting Mr. Goldberg and wavering Ms. Nooshin to act with common sense and vote unanimously to support the status quo on permit students.
I am a proud citizen of Beverly Hills but I am ashamed of the tone this permit discussion has taken.Mr. Goldberg is the most divisive member ever to sit on our on our school board. His information was wrong and needlessly Inflammatory. I don't know how someone who was fired from the esteemed Maple Counseling Center, in Beverly Hills, after only a year on the job and who has been dragged into LA Superior court as often as he has earned a seat on our school board.
This whole ridiculous ordeal makes me want to move out of Beverly Hills. Should we tell those who live outside of our borders that they can not walk on our sidewalks because they don't pay taxes? Thus non residents would not patronize BH stores. I don't think the business owners or the chamber would ever do that.
Since when is one child more derserving than another becauase of his or her address?? And I would like someone to explain to me how permit children lower resident's property taxes??? If anything, children on permits have made our schools better by bringing in funds that made our schools rich with programming. And better schools means higher property values.So PLEASE someone explain that horrible idea that has been circulated by people that believer in "Residents First".
I have lived in Beverly Hills a long time and have never seen such a horrible situation. It is sad that a group of residents would look at children as dollars and want to get rid of them when they thought they would no longer profit the district. They were misguided by a couple of Board members who put their own political agendas above their actual jobs of making our schools better! I want to thank Board members Meshkaty, Demeter and Lurie for staying strong and doing what is best for all children in our schools and District, despite their opponents bullying and threatening tactics.
I have lived in Beverly Hills a long time and have never seen such a horrible situation. It is sad that a group of residents would look at children as dollars and want to get rid of them when they thought they would no longer profit the district. They were misguided by a couple of Board members who put their own political agendas above their actual jobs of making our schools better! I want to thank Board members Meshkaty, Demeter and Lurie for staying strong and doing what is best for all children in our schools and District, despite their opponents bullying and threatening tactics.
Dr. Demeter is incredible leader and visionary on the School Board and the majority of the residents AGREE with her assessment of the community. Anyone who states anything to the contrary need only to walk around any of our schools.
Demeter and fellow board members Lurie and Meshkaty have and always have had the best interest of children at heart. All children - not only the ones that live within the Beverly Hills city limits. They have stood up for what's right and withstood threats and incredibly nasty Beverly Hills resident behavior. It should be noted that there were actually more "residents" for the matriculation of the permit students than against. On the other hand Brian Goldberg and Steven Fenton have caused a completely unnecessary divide in the community that has ended friendships and adversely affected innocent children. They did all of this based on false unsubstantiated numbers that have since been proved wrong. SHAME ON THEM!
Demeter is an incredibly divisive figure in Beverly Hills and the majority of residents disagree with her assessment of the situation in the city.