The Los Alamitos Unified School District was founded in June 1979 after the voters pass a unification referendum breaking the secondary schools away from the Anaheim Union High School District. One of the cochairman of the unification committee was elected to the board along with three Members of the Board of the then existing Los Alamitos Elementary school district. One of the newly elected members of the new school board was Mark Abrams a student at Los Alamitos High School and 18 years old. He is considered the youngest elected official in the history of the United States being elected just three months after his 18th birthday. He was also a current member of the student body and wound up eventually signing his own high school diploma. Around 1987, Los Alamitos began a day care program from 6:30 AM to 6: PM for 24 students Who were enrolled in Los Alamitos elementary school. By 1993 the day care program served 800 children in grades Kindergarten through 8. The price was $2.50 per hour per child, with each child serving a weekly minimum of 10 hours; this price was lower than that of an average private preschool, which would charge $300 per month per child. The childcare program was entirely self-supported by the fees paid by parents. Shirley Horn, a former Los Alamitos teacher and principal who had become a consultant, designed the program, which offered activities including arts instruction, computer training, homework assistance, after-school recreation. As of 1993, several parents in the Long Beach Unified School District boundaries enrolled their children in the Los Alamitos day care program so that they could then use LBUSD district transfer rules, stating that parents may enroll their children at a school closest to their daycare provider even if the school is in another school district, to obtain an inter-district transfer from the Los Alamitos district and send their children to Los Alamitos schools. As a result, LBUSD was losing money, because state education funds were paid based on attendance. Horn said "It was never anyone's intention to make the program a drawing card from other school districts. It did turn out that way." Gordon Dillow of the Los Angeles Times said "Although school officials say they do not track the racial make-up of their inter-district transfer students, the perception has been that many, perhaps most, of the Long Beach-to-Los Alamitos transfer students are Anglo." Whites were a minority in LBUSD, with 26% of the student body, while they were a majority at Los Alamitos USD, with 75% of the student body. LBUSD established its own preschool programs so that parents could no longer use the loophole.
Demographics
In the 1992-1993 school year the district schools were about 75% White. During that school year, the Los Alamitos district had about 1,200 students from other school districts. 400 of them lived in the Long Beach Unified School District. Some students had parents working in the Los Alamitos district, and some attended the Los Alamitos daycare in order to go to Los Alamitos schools.
