By Yuka Noda
Staff Writer
Students who do not live in Manhattan Beach or Hermosa Beach should feel encouraged to apply for permits to attend Mira Costa, and the district should allow them to attend in order to expand cultural diversity.
For various reasons, students have been applying for permits to attend Costa. The application is a two-part process that requires the student to be released from the previous school to be accepted into Costa.
Students are selected to attend Costa through a lottery. Siblings of students who attend Costa have been automatically enrolled in the past, but in recent years, the administrators changed the rule so that there is no guarantee that siblings would get in.
Although students are not required to have a certain Grade Point Average to apply for a permit, they are recommended to have at least a 3.0 GPA in their academic classes from the previous school to be successful at Costa. If a permit student has a GPA lower than 2.0, discipline or attendance issues, they may be asked to leave. This is a fair system that ensures the academic success of transfer students.
The number of people who have been accepted as permit students has been decreasing for the past three years from about 170, 150, and finally to about 90 students per year.
Some students and parents may argue that by introducing more students into the district could lower the standards of education due to the fact that there is only one teacher in a single class of many students. However, success is not only determined by academics, but by the student’s ability to associate with other people.
By encouraging students who live outside the district to apply for a permit, it allows the students at Costa to mingle with students of other race and ethnicity. According to the latest census of Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach, about 88% of the population total is predominantly white.
Compared to Manhattan and Hermosa Beach, cities such as Torrance, Redondo Beach, and Gardena have a higher percentage of minorities. By encouraging those students to come to Costa, it will create a more diverse environment. This can help students learn to be more accepting of people of another ethnicity, and will also represent the world in a more accurate way, which in turn will prepare them for the real world situations where they would have to associate themselves with people of other races.
Not only would Costa benefit from the diversity of the people there, but by encouraging permit students to apply, Costa would also be able to sponsor talents, such as speaking a different language. This in turn could allow the students to experience cultures other than that their own.
Costa is considered to be one of the most rigorous and demanding high schools in terms of academics, but also offers classes and clubs which are not often found in many other schools. Students from other districts should have the opportunity to participate in these prestigious programs if they are greatly interested. Students who are looking to attend Costa as a way of pursuing their goals should not be turned down just because they live in a different district.
Additionally, for every student that attends Costa, the district is given a set amount of money to spend. By encouraging permit students, the district would be able to gain money to finance other projects as well as paying off whatever debt they may have from the construction.
Although Costa is limited by the 44 acres of land available to accommodate 2600 students, it is beneficial to encourage students to apply for permits and to accept more permit students.
In order to better prepare the students of Mira Costa High School for a world full of different ethnicities and races, the district should continue to encourage students of other cities to apply for permits.
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