We’re gonna nail their ass on this one, because AFAIK there’s been no legislative change here to allow this new stunt. The people who run this town– they just don’t care, do they?
Today the Burbank Adult School’s new class schedule hit the mailboxes, and the first thing we noticed is their sudden policy of requiring high school diploma and ESL students to now pay a “$25” tuition and registration fee.
Wrong.
By both state and federal law, all ESL classes, as well as high school graduation classes and basic adult education classes (like special ed. and literacy) are required to be provided to the public for free.
In fact, they’re subsidized, and don’t cost the district a dime. Worse, the monies that Burbank gets for these classes also help to subsidize much of their exorbitantly-budgeted facility “costs” that the district then skims off the top of their BAS budget.
Free means free, too, which also means that no wise guy down at district headquarters can try to soak these worthy students for extra cash– the way they have for years by forcing them to pay for required, overpriced “textbooks” down at the office store.
We’ve also been wondering for years why both the Reseda and Hollywood Adult Schools can charge much less for their self-supporting classes. If we didn’t know any better (which we do, from experience), we’d think that the BUSD is misusing the Adult School as a cozy little cash cow.
This place has had a sleazy history lately, as detailed here and here. And three months ago the Burbank School Board stole over $1 million dollars out of the separate Adult School reserve, just like that. It’s supposed to be for the Adult School because the money came from outside agencies just for that purpose.
Burbank, California 
It looks more and more like this school board has a whole lot to answer for. Everything appears to be operated in secret and at a high cost of taxpayer money with little if anything to show for it. Do these school board members really know what is going on in this district or not ? We need a change in leadership!
Isn’t there some place to complain about this ripoff?
Regarding the Constitutional right to a free education in k-12 in California, check out Hartzell v. Connell. Also, check out your county Grand Jury and its complaint process. That is the People’s Jury that can investigated government entities in your county. Do Uniform Complaints and follow up in the 60-day deadline that the District must respond. Just write your complaint and put at the top of it: Uniform Complaint. That’s where you can start.
There’s also OCR in San Francisco, as the Adult School handles mostly protected-group students, and these new policies have a clearly disparate impact on them.