Public schools are the largest social safety net in America today. One way to think about it: LA County Schools offer free lunch to 884,731 students, and reduced price lunches to 144,509 more (CDE Source Link Below). That is 2/3 of all students in LA County. Students receive free or reduced price lunches based on their parents’ income level and their household size. We use this Free and Reduced Price Meal (FRPM) Rate to describe poverty in schools. And, of course, that rate is distributed unevenly across the city.
Larger, Interactive Version: Free and Reduced Price Lunches in LA County
Source: California Department of Education – http://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sd/sd/filessp.asp
In this map, red represents the schools with the highest percent of FRPM students, while blue represents the lower percentages. In LA County, the median school has 69.6% students with free or reduced lunch. As a result, even the blue schools have high levels of poverty; they are just low in comparison to the rest of LA.
I made this map with software that allows you to zoom in and move the map and it is fun (read as: nerdy ecstasy) to zoom around and see little trends. In general, you can see the big difference between the inner city and the suburbs. Poverty is generally concentrated in Central and South LA.
But here are some of the other interesting things to look at:
1.) Downey – when I used to teach in Huntington Park, my students used to call Downey “Latino Beverly Hills”. It certainly doesn’t compare to Beverly Hills, but if you zoom in, you can definitely see that it has lower poverty than surrounding areas.
2.) Lifeline Education Charter – Located in the heart of Compton, surrounded by very poor schools, it has only 40% students with FRPM.
3.) Mar Vista Gardens – I grew up in West LA and went to Venice High and had friends who lived in Mar Vista Gardens Projects. If you zoom in to that area, you can literally see the schools that serve that area as an island of poverty surrounded by wealthier schools.
4.) Mount Washington – Surrounded by the poorer neighborhoods of Cypress Park, Glassell Park and Highland Park, it looks so strange to see one school with only 13.8% FRPM (compared to 91% at Aragon about 1/2 a mile away).
5.) Those two dots in the Malibu/Calabasas hills – those are camps which are connected to Juvenile hall.
Take a look for yourself – what do you think? Let me know if there is something that stands out to you.