Why Is It So Hard to Enroll a Kid in Public School?

California Sure Doesn’t Act As If Educational Access Is Central to Civic Life

A wiseacre neighbor walked by the corner where I was standing and shouted, “Is this the line for the U2 tickets?”

Nope. The line, which extended out a brick building for about a block, was just another group of California parents forced to prove, in this age of hyper-regulated childhood, that we actually live where we’re trying to send our kids to school.

With a new school year comes a new season of student enrollment, and registering kids has never been more fraught. After years of hearing all the talk about the …