By Tijana Srdanov

The rumors began as whispers in our tiny town of Topanga, CA. A text here, a side conversation there. The news soon gained momentum and ripped through the community like the wildfires we pray won’t come. Two teachers were being cut from the local Elementary school, including a beloved Kindergarten teacher with over eleven years of experience. Five weeks into the academic year, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) plans on displacing 30 percent of our 231 students. The worst part is that most of the children who will either lose their teacher or be forced into a different classroom are between the ages of four and six.

Every September, LAUSD adjusts student-to-teacher ratios in a practice called “Norm Day.” Most often these adjustments end with teachers losing positions well after students have already established classroom routines and bonds with teachers and classmates. Norm Day leaves schools scrambling to fill classrooms with appropriate educators, resulting in months of substitute teacher limbo. At its worst, entire classes and families are forced to switch schools entirely. It is a day that every public school in LAUSD dreads, and it is a driving force for parents to find alternatives outside of L.A.’s already faltering public school system. In our case, we decided to fight back.  It’s important to spend a moment on the unique nature of our little community to understand why. 

 A sliver of a canyon, nestled within the Santa Monica Mountains, Topanga’s population of 8,000 is rife with history from musical legends to film stars and is currently populated by an eclectic mix of artists, actors, writers, musicians, hippies, yuppies, and transplants from all over the world. On Friday mornings you will find most residents strolling through the local Farmer’s Market, and evenings gathering at neighborhood spots like Endless Color or Froggies. We support our local theater, an ethereal open-air venue where Shakespeare is performed under a canopy of Oaks, and on the third Friday of the month, we lay blankets down in a field outside our community center for Food Truck “Friyays”, allowing our children to run free while we dance and mingle well into the night. It is an idyllic rural haven set apart from the urban L.A. sprawl – a portal into another world.

However, Topanga is not only a modern utopia, it is also a town on constant alert for natural disasters. Neighbors communicate on WhatsApp and all social media channels to keep each other safe, regarding smoke, red flag warnings, mudslides, and more.  Just this year, a massive rockslide closed the main road, Highway 27, for nearly four months. Governor Newsom declared it a state of emergency and made national news. Above all else, Topanga is a place where people look out for one another.

At the heart of this community is Topanga Elementary Charter School (TECS). A hidden gem in the LAUSD System, TECS boasts unique perks like science hikes and a robust theater program, thanks to strong parental involvement and fundraising efforts. However, because of the remote location, the school has historically found it difficult to staff up with new teachers and aides. Most of Topanga’s dedicated teachers have been at the school for over a decade. Thus we protect our teachers, the great ones, at all costs. The news that two of our very best were being let go due to under-enrollment caused shockwaves throughout our small community. But the shock quickly gave way to anger and activism.

How did this happen at such a special school, one that any kid would be lucky to attend? After a lot of digging and a crash course in LAUSD bureaucracy, we learned that the complex algorithm the district uses to gauge enrollment each year overestimated Topanga Elementary’s projected enrollment numbers by about thirty children. This caused administrators to communicate to prospective parents that there was a waitlist 70 children deep, subsequently turning away would-be enrollees. Topanga’s school zoning also perplexingly does not allocate all of its 90290 zip code residents to Topanga Elementary. That, combined with competition from nearby private schools, and the remote location, created a perfect storm for under-enrollment.  

It’s heartbreaking and unacceptable to think that our youngest students, who have already acclimated to their classrooms and settled in with new friends and teachers, are to be ripped out of that environment in their first year of school. Within 48 hours, over 70 parents organized and began protesting outside the school every morning at 7:30 a.m. Parents created recruitment signs and flyers to post in surrounding areas and notified local media outlets. They also wrote a petition and over fifty letters to Superintendent Carvalho and his administrators, appealing for an exemption from Norm Day, citing the unique circumstances that brought us here.  

Norm Day is an irresponsible practice that wreaks havoc on teachers, students, and parents across Los Angeles. It fails to put children first – the most important factor in making these decisions. On Tuesday, the School Board will hold a meeting and allow for public comment. We secured three spots and will speak on the school’s behalf. Topanga parents will be showing up at Tuesday’s LAUSD Board of Education meeting to request a respite; save our teachers, give us more time, and fix our zoning so all Topanga families have a chance to stay at Topanga Elementary. 

We have not won this battle yet, and going up against a system as complicated and massive as LAUSD has been a full-time job on top of our regular jobs and family duties, but we are not giving up. We need to enroll more children by September 13th to save our teachers and our children from disruption. While at times it may seem insurmountable, our signature expression in Topanga Canyon is “When Pigs Fly.” The parents of Topanga Elementary Charter School are hoping this week a piggie somewhere gets its wings.