Future HBUHSD student Celine Phan (’21) contemplates whether to stay at her home school, Westminster High School, or do a district transfer to FVHS. Photo by John Le.by Elise Tran & Vivian Le, Staff Writers
Fountain Valley High School (FVHS) attracts many transfer students every year coming from both in and out of the district.
Types of transfers split into two branches: intradistrict and interdistrict transfers. Intradistrict transfers are students who do not have FVHS as their feeder school, but choose to attend FVHS. A student is considered an intradistrict transfer if he or she is already in the boundaries of the Huntington Beach Union High School District (HBUHSD).
The California Education Code Section 35160.5 enables students to attend their preferred school in respects to the district boundaries, intradistrict transfers. This request must be reviewed with the capacity of the school in mind; if there is room then the student will be accepted. Meanwhile, the California Education Code sections 46600-456610 enables students to transfer districts into the school of their choice as long as both districts permit the transfer.
Every year at around January or February, schools have an open enrollment for intradistrict transfers where students are free to choose any school within the HBUHSD. The application is found online and can be submitted electronically to the district office. The window for applications is approximately six weeks. The office then reviews every application and if the requested school has room, the students are accepted.
A common mistake made by applicants is not carefully reading the directions given online. Because of this, potential students get rejected. Around March, students requesting to attend their non-feeder school get notified whether or not they have been accepted.
“My older brother was supposed to go to La Quinta,” said Brandon Nguyen (‘19), an interdistrict transfer from the Garden Grove Unified School District (GGUSD), “but he wanted to play soccer. Fountain [Valley High School] was the better choice for that, and as a result, I followed him.”
Interdistrict students are students who live outside the boundaries of HBUHSD such as the GGUSD.
Interdistrict students must go to their home district and fill out paperwork to be released from the district. They take the application to the district office within a timeline and apply to the district online. Once they are accepted into the district, they choose their school and wait for the response.
“[Applying to FVHS] took awhile, so it was really hard, because the school needed a lot of information and a lot of steps for me to be in this school,” said Nina Bui (‘20), an interdistrict transfer student from Alamitos Intermediate School.
Because the school can only take in so many students, the school figures out how many spots are available. Then Assistant Principal Nancy Peterson receives a stack of requests from interdistrict students and determines whether or not the student gets accepted. Peterson bases the acceptance on grade point average (GPA), the types of classes they took and if he or she will succeed as a student and a person at FVHS.
This year, there are about 800 interdistrict transfer students across all grade levels according to Peterson.
“I think it’s a good system, it’s a good process. Students and families who follow the process are usually very happy with it and we welcome all students here,” said Peterson.
