After the Palisades Charter High School was devastated by recent wildfires, the Beverly Hills Unified School District (BHUSD) welcomed 47 displaced students before pausing enrollment to consider the impact on the district’s resources. In a special meeting on Feb. 3, the BHUSD Board of Education revised its policy and will now curtail enrollment for nonresidents, with the exception of those whose homes were lost or classified as uninhabitable as a result of the fires.
Following the outbreak of the fires, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Jan. 14 allowing students whose schools were impacted by fires to enroll in other school districts. The Palisades Charter High School had a student body of 2900 students, with the main campus left in an unusable state by the fires. Although many of these students have since switched to the school’s interim online program and virtual class offerings, others prefer to continue their education in person at other school districts, including the BHUSD.
The BHUSD is in receipt of a total of 151 requests for enrollment of students from schools in the Pacific Palisades and has already enrolled 47 at the time of writing. BHUSD Superintendent Dr. Michael Bregy said, “We’ve been in full alignment with the executive order by accepting students … we have ensured that our enrollment remains within the capacity and resources of our school district. We do have a commitment to help our neighbors but also ensure we are providing a high-quality education for our residents as well.”
“We have 47 displaced students across all four high school levels … if we take more there will be no place to put those students,” Bregy said. The main reason for this, he said, is because teachers at Beverly Hills High School are now at maximum capacity and further staff would need to be hired to accommodate more students.
Board Vice President Judy Manouchehri said, “I think taking 47 students is way beyond what we should’ve taken, it was very generous of us to do so. We were urged—not forced or mandated to do this and we’ve taken funds away from our resident students to give to these 47 students.”
The majority of the students requesting to enroll in the BHUSD are of high school age, with seven requests for the middle school. This has made the enrollment process more challenging as according to Bregy, high school transcripts must be reviewed and assessed on an individual basis with the help of a counselor to determine class sizes and teacher availability.
Assistant Superintendent for Student Services Laura Collins-Williams said that many of the 151 students who requested to enroll had not lost their homes in the Pacific Palisades but had lost their schools.
“To my knowledge, we do not have anyone who has listed that they’ve lost their homes. We’ve had some people enroll as residents as they have relocated to Beverly Hills but of the 151 pending requests, none of those students have lost their homes,” Collins-Williams said.
The 47 students who have already been enrolled were decided upon before the district finalized who they would prioritize enrollment for. As nonresidents of Beverly Hills, they were enrolled under the executive order that allows the residency requirement to be waived for the 2024/25 calendar year.
Board Member Russell Stuart raised concerns over a potentially looser prior interpretation of the word “displaced,” which could be used to include students who have not lost their homes but were affected by the fires in other ways, such as poor air quality.
Effective immediately, new enrollments into the BHUSD from areas impacted by the fires, including those in the 90272 zip code, must provide a FEMA card or insurance claim proof to show their residence has been deemed uninhabitable.
Displaced students will be enrolled for the remainder of the 2024/25 academic year.
