Disclaimer: This is the information I learned around 2023-2024. My family had just decided to move to the LA area, so we had the luxury to explore the many immersion school options in the LA and surrounding school districts. The details might be outdated now, but hopefully the information and methods I used will help you.
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)
I love how many language immersion options LAUSD offers: Spanish, French, Chinese, Korean, Armenian, and Japanese. The best piece of advice I can offer to parents is to (1) take tours of the schools you’re interested in, (2) call the CHOICES helpline in October to answer your questions and ask for their advice, and (3) make sure you understand the waitlist system and know exactly which schools you want waitlisted!
- Taking school tours: This is essential for every parent, whether you’re looking for language immersion or not. Call the school or check out their website to find out when tours will take place. You’ll get a great sense of the teachers’ and principal’s attitudes, any administrative drama, the school’s strengths and weaknesses, and whether you like the environment.
- Calling CHOICES: LA has a lottery system for their charter, magnet, and language immersion schools. It’s a very confusing process to say the least, and I called CHOICES (as well as reading parents’ websites) to help me navigate the system. This was SUPER helpful since the CHOICES office helped me understand which schools tend to have long waitlists. For example, I was told Spanish is the most popular, and it’d be much easier to get into French or Chinese even though we would have the lowest priority in the lottery system (we lived outside of the LA district). Be sure to call when the On-time/normal Application period first opens up (usually October); and yes, that’s nearly a year before school starts. If you wait until the Late Application period (usually February), it’s very difficult to get ahold of anybody.
- Understanding the waitlist system: When I was applying, I was told to be careful about being waitlisted for multiple schools. For example, If my child was waitlisted for two schools and our 2nd-choice school accepted my child off of the waitlist, then she’d automatically be removed from the waitlist for our 1st-choice school. In other words, if she made it off of the 2nd-choice school’s waitlist first, then she’d no longer have any chance of getting into the 1st-choice school. This made me a bit paranoid, so I ended up just picking one school. Either way, it’s definitely worth making sure you understand the lottery systems of the schools you’re interested in. Some school districts are fairly straight forward, while others are more complicated. LAUSD has a point-scoring matrix that’s one of the most complicated I’ve ever seen! So once you think you understand the process, it’s ALWAYS a good idea to repeat it back to the the school administrators or the CHOICES hotline and have them confirm you understand it correctly.
Other School Districts
Because we hadn’t settled on where to live yet when we first moved to the LA area, I got to explore a lot of other surrounding school districts besides LAUSD, and it was an intense bootcamp experience to say the least! It’s been a 1 or 2 years since I applied, but here’s my recollection of the districts. Unlike LAUSD, though, these districts only offer Spanish dual immersion (at least when my family moved to LA).
Torrance: Their program was fairly new. There are two elementary schools, Carr Elementary and Torrance Elementary, offering Spanish immersion, and you can apply for Transitional Kindergarten or Kindergarten. If one of these two schools is your home school (the school that you’d normally attend based on your address), then you have higher priority in the lottery system.
Hawthorne: One of the oldest Spanish immersion programs (around three decades) in the LA area. As such, they have a lot of space and experience. The best thing about Hawthorne is that it’s a first-come first-serve system. As long as you get the right paperwork in (e.g. if you live outside of the district, you’ll need to submit a release from your home school) and attend a parent tour, my understanding is that you’re practically guaranteed a spot!
Lawndale: There are two Spanish immersion elementary schools, Billy Mitchell and Mark Twain. The lottery system prioritizes all Lawndale residents rather than the residents whose home school is one of the immersion schools. But you do have to indicate on your application which school you prefer, or only apply for one school.
Redondo Beach: There’s just one elementary school that offers Spanish immersion, Washington Elementary. For some reason, they required parents to first enroll in Kindergarten before you could even apply for their immersion program. Other districts didn’t require this step. If your child is a native Spanish speaker, then your odds are very good since they separate out Spanish-speaking kids in the lottery system. Spanish speakers were given a proficiency test, and then there was a a separate lottery for the rest of the applicants.
Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach: Sadly, neither of these districts has a dual language immersion program. If you live in one of these school districts and want your child to be enrolled in language immersion, you can still apply for another district’s program. (You’ll also need to apply for a release permit from your district.) I recommend applying to LAUSD or Hawthorne because Torrance and Redondo Beach have fewer openings and a lower chance of getting in. But there’s no harm in also applying for Torrance and Redondo Beach!
The Lottery Experience
Different school districts have very different lottery systems so it’s important to make sure you understand the rules, application, and deadlines. Here are some characteristics that might give you higher priority in the lottery.
- Residence: In some districts, residents whose home school is the school with the immersion program have higher priority. But in other districts, residents of the entire school district have equal priority. Besides Hawthorne, all the districts I know of give lower priority to people who live outside of the district.
- Siblings: In most cases, if an older sibling got into the program, then the younger siblings will get automatic acceptance.
- School District Employees: Typically, I’ve seen school district employees’ children get higher priority in their district’s lottery.
- Native Speakers: Immersion programs provide the best language learning experience when around one third to one half of the students are native speakers (meaning they live in a household that speaks the other language). This lets the students help each other learn both languages inside and outside of the classroom. There tend to be more English speakers than native speakers applying for an immersion program, so if your child is a native speaker, you probably have a higher chance of getting in.
Sometimes the lottery process is pretty straightforward, but other times, it could prioritize applicants based on a combination of different attributes. Be sure to call your school district, read their website, and talk to parents who have already gone through the experience to make sure you have the latest and most up-to-date information!