As Los Angeles Unified School District counts the number of enrolled students, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho explained how he plans to improve the district. (Beverly Press/Park Labrea News file photo)

The Los Angeles Unified School District has completed its annual Norm Day, the date on which actively-enrolled students are counted.

The district has an enrollment of 431,158 students for the 2022-23 school year, which represents an increase of nearly 2.5% (10,445 students) compared to the projected enrollment during budget development. The student count is the basis by which district revenue apportionments are determined by the California Department of Education and how the district must shift teacher assignments to meet the mandated ratio of students to teachers. T

he LAUSD is continuing to focus on long-term sustainability through budgetary, programmatic and human resources strategies, concentrating on ensuring schools are able to offer effective, engaging programs that support all students.

“L.A. Unified is eager to begin enacting initiatives from the strategic plan and actualize the district as the premiere urban district in the nation,” LAUSD superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said. “We have several new strategies to bring students back to our school system, such as universal transitional kindergarten [and] increased transportation availability for residential students, and the new Strategic Enrollment and Program Planning Office is working on differentiated, community-based strategies to improve student recruitment in targeted schools. L.A. Unified also has strategies that will address the retention of students already in classrooms by providing a worldclass academic experience which includes increasing student performance and test scores. This will position students to be more accomplished and competitive than their counterparts from other school districts, charter and private schools. Public education has never been more critical to the future demands of the world following a pandemic and the upending of societal needs.”

Carvalho also called for alterations to the way students are counted, signaling changes to the Norm Day strategy in coming years.

“Norm Day is a crucial process and has the potential to significantly impact the operations of a school, but the district must reconceptualize its execution,” he added. “While Los Angeles Unified has historically chosen the fifth or sixth Friday of the school year to complete Norm Day, this understandably results in upheaval for schools whose teachers are moved elsewhere. The process is not community-centric, student-centric or teacher-centric. 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.”

For information visit achieve. lausd.net/100dayreport.