Valley schools lament fund loss

Six students. Barbara Jones in the Daily News,.

Had just a half-dozen more students at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies applied for free or discounted lunches, the magnet school would have qualified to continue receiving federal money for campuses with high numbers of poor youngsters.

Instead, under tighter guidelines passed this week by the Los Angeles school board, SOCES will no longer qualify for Title I funds, blowing a $400,000 hole in its budget for the 2012-13 school year.

"When I heard we were losing Title I money and I heard it was nearly $400,000, I knew we were sunk," said Alex Wald, who has two children at SOCES and is active in the school's PTA. "There's no way we can raise that."