The Riverside Unified School District (RUSD) Board of Education Thursday unanimously approved a resolution opening up enrollment to nonresident students for the upcoming school year, continuing its streak as one of a handful of districts in Southern California participating in the state program.
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“If you lived outside the district, the best way to come in is to come in through a District of Choice transfer,” Deputy Superintendent Tim Walker said during the October 1 meeting. “Once you get here, you don’t have to apply and get released from your district year after year, which is the requirement for an interdistrict transfer.”
The District of Choice program is part of a state law that allows students to transfer to participating districts, regardless of whether they live within the district’s boundaries, without first seeking approval from their home district.
RUSD joined the program shortly after it began in 2010, according to Walker, and has continued to participate. He added that admission was solely to enter the district and didn’t guarantee attendance at a specific school site.
Over the last three years, Walker said the number of applications for the program has increased, but was still below the district’s maximum. For the 2026-27 school year, the district accepted 358 students, but only 279 ultimately decided to transfer to RUSD.
“Many of those who did not come were because they were looking for either a specific school or a specific program that had been maxed out with the way we do transfers with the current process,” Walker added.
A majority of students transferred in from neighboring school districts, with the most, 94 students, coming directly from Alvord Unified School District. There have been no transfers out of RUSD as part of the District of Choice program.
Walker added a lack of nearby districts participating in the program could have contributed to the lack of RUSD students transferring out. According to the California Department of Education, RUSD is the only district in the Inland Empire that participated in the program for the 2026-27 school year.
In the upcoming 2027-28 school year, RUSD is set to open a total of 900 slots, divided evenly between elementary, middle and high school.
Those seats will become available during the application window, which runs from November 1 to January 8, 2027. The district is required by state law to accept all applicants, or select via a lottery system if more students than the allotted amount apply.
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