California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a settlement with Sacramento City Unified School District after a state investigation found the district used unlawful enrollment and student transfer practices, some of which affected students of color.
The investigation concluded that the school district violated state open enrollment and nondiscrimination laws, failed to provide required protections for students experiencing homelessness or in foster care, and created enrollment barriers that disproportionately impacted Black and Latino students.
The California Department of Justice and Sac Unified agreed to identify changes necessary to comply with law and to remove these barriers.
“We recognize that even one enrollment process failure is too many, and represents a failure to properly support a student and their family,” the district’s superintendent, Lisa Allen, said in a press release. “We look forward to having the support and oversight of the Attorney General’s Office to ensure any enrollment barriers that may still exist for our families, particularly those who are less advantaged, are removed.”
Sac Unified officials said the findings are not indicative of deliberate or widespread systemic discrimination in past or current enrollment practices and that they reflect a small number of isolated missteps over a period of years.
They added many of the attorney general’s specific concerns were identified and addressed before the investigation.
As with the settlement between the state and the school district, Sac Unified has five years to implement a centralized assistant superintendent position to supervise enrollment; create an internal dashboard to display enrollment data and trends; have diverse and representative community advisory groups; provide staff training on open enrollment; and evaluate its admission exams for incoming kindergarten and first-grade students.
“Every student has the right to equal access to a quality public education. That starts with enrollment,” Bonta said Jan. 9. “Protecting the academic futures and overall well-being of our kids is a top priority — and we’re committed to taking action when we hear concerns.”
In 2024, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into whether Sac Unified complied with state laws and regulations governing school enrollment and student transfers after the start of the school year. The department found that the district has two ways of enrolling students: registration and open enrollment.
While registration is mandatory and occurs on a rolling basis throughout the year, open enrollment is voluntary and allows parents to register their kids in certain schools without consideration of neighborhood boundaries.
Open enrollment also allows schools to prioritize students who live within neighborhood boundaries while permitting schools with available space to enroll students from outside the neighborhood.
If class sizes reach a certain level, the district transfers students after the start of the school year to other schools where class enrollment caps have not been reached.
The Department of Justice found the district’s methods of capping enrollment affected local violated state laws, which focus on ensuring equal access to public education and open enrollment.
“I am confident that Sacramento City Unified will implement these necessary reforms to ensure that state laws are followed and no one is unfairly disadvantaged when it comes to enrolling their kids in school,” Bonta said in a press release.