An Anaheim school district banks on international students amid enrollment crisis
Months before a fight erupted over mass teacher layoffs at Anaheim Union High School District, trustees considered a licensing agreement to help attract more international students.
The district’s existing international program aims to “create exchanges exposing both the international students and district students to different cultures and experiences.”
But with declining enrollment and sagging attendance rates, attracting F-1 visa students paying $15,250 tuition is another way district officials have sought to inject revenue into a cash-strapped budget to maintain staffing levels before initially approving 119 teacher layoffs in March.
Discussion on the licensing contract, though, was scant during the Aug. 10, 2023, school board meeting.
“There’s no cost in entering into this agreement?” trustee Jessica Guerrero asked.
It wouldn’t cost the district a dime, she was assured.
With that, the board voted unanimously to allow Lumicend, a newly formed Irvine-based company, use of the district’s intellectual property, especially that of Oxford Academy in Cypress, in efforts to secure international school partnerships and recruit at least five full-time F-1 visa students every school year.
Before the contract vote, trustees approved a $30,000 study in March 2023 by educational consultant John Ahn on market opportunities in Asia for the district’s international program, which specifically recommended Lumicend as a third-party to broker partnerships abroad, including for a proposed Oxford Academy Korea campus.
“Lumicend will be responsible for providing the necessary support and services required for a successful partnership in Korea, relieving the district of such responsibilities,” Ahn wrote in the report stamped with Oxford Academy’s logo.
Ahn later inked the licensing contract that followed as Lumicend’s president.
He did not disclose if he had any relationship to the company, which received its state business license two weeks before the vote, when authoring the July 2023 study. The agenda for the school board meeting also did not attach the report, and it was later obtained by a TimesOC records request.
“Dr. Ahn’s position with Lumicend was both disclosed and known as part of agenda consideration before voting,” a district spokesperson said.
Trustees did not return a request for comment.
In 2017, the school board approved the district’s application to the Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program to allow for the enrollment of international students on F-1 visas.
By then, AUHSD, which is 70% Latino and serves 27,000 students across campuses in Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress, La Palma and Stanton, had already hemorrhaged roughly 2,000 students.
The district signed an $83,000 contract with Linden Educational Services in 2019 to help organize school tours abroad, recruit international students and administer a housing program.
Supt. Mike Matsuda traveled to China that year to tour numerous school sites.
Before the pandemic shut down schools, the district had 21 international students — primarily from China — attending its schools during the 2019-20 academic year, according to internal records.
Half of the international students attended high schools in Cypress and La Palma.
The pandemic interrupted recruitment efforts, but within two school years, the district’s F-1 visa program rebounded from remote learning.
With tuition up from prepandemic levels, AUHSD collected nearly $500,000 from educating its last international cohort, district documents show.
More than half of those students attended school at three campuses outside of Anaheim, including Oxford Academy, which is ranked as the fourth-best high school in the state, where students have to test into attendance.
According to an annual report by Homeland Security Investigations, AUHSD placed in the Top 200 for F-1 visa students enrolled at a secondary school, a list otherwise dominated by private schools.
“Private school students are tuition-paying students,” said Christopher Page, executive director of the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel. “Public schools are not built the same way. That’s why private schools are well-suited for the visa program.”
Declining enrollment is not unique to the district.
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, student enrollment is down statewide with a 6% drop charted since 2013.
Between 2013 and 2023, school districts in Orange County shed 13% of their student body, a trend expect to continue through the next decade.
For as much additional revenue as AUHSD’s international program has brought in over the years, board members still had to address projected budget shortfalls earlier this year.
“How did we address our declining enrollment?” board president Annemarie Randle-Trejo asked at the pivotal Mar. 7, 2024, school board meeting.
Assistant Supt. Jaron Fried mentioned the district’s F-1 visa program that allows for the recruitment of international students first in his response.
The teacher layoffs, which were later rescinded amid school-site rallies and administrative law hearings, prompted a renewed interest in the district’s recent contracts, including its licensing agreement with Lumicend.
According to the Delaware Division of Corporations, Lumicend formed on June 9, 2023.
Later that month, Ahn referenced a Zoom meeting with Fried in an email to AUHSD’s legal counsel.
“One of the topics we discussed was partnership arrangement options with overseas schools,” Ahn wrote. “At that time, we briefly talked about a third-party entity or ‘intermediary’ as a possible way to shield the district from potential liabilities and other legal concerns that could arise.”
In July, the same month the feasibility study was completed, Ahn sent the district’s attorney a template of the licensing agreement that trustees would later be voting on and mentioned that a potential South Korean partnership would like a nonbinding agreement signed in August.
The proposed contract would give Lumicend exclusive licensing in South Korea.
Lumicend received its California business license on July 26, 2023, according to secretary of state records. Fifteen days later, trustees approved the licensing agreement.
Ahn did not respond to TimesOC requests for comment.
The district released a statement on April 25 defending its consulting contracts against criticisms aired during the layoff fight.
“Recent rumors and accusations about ‘special relationships’ and implied corruption related to the District’s contracts with outside consultants are unfounded and reckless and may constitute defamation,” the statement read.
The district deemed consultants “thought leaders” who lent their expertise in agreement with its educational mission.
Its statement referred to Timothy Nguyen as Lumicend’s owner but made no mention of Ahn, though secretary of state documents in October 2023 listed him as the company’s co-manager.
“To be clear, Lumicend pays the District, not the other way around,” the statement said. “This agreement provides revenue to the District and bolsters an important program.”
Under the contract, Lumicend has already paid AUHSD an initial $15,000 for licensing rights. But questions about disclosures of the company’s potential profits from establishing international school partnerships with the district’s intellectual property went unanswered.
With layoffs averted for now, AUHSD projects that it will lose 4,300 more students by the 2027-28 school year.
Whether the district’s international program can blunt the impact remains to be seen.
Ahn wrote an email to district officials in January updating them on Lumicend’s progress in terms of securing international partnerships.
“We do not have a firm signed commitment yet,” he wrote, “but we are engaged in four separate discussions with schools in Vietnam, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and China, and we are hopeful that these negotiations will lead to partnerships this year.”
The district repeatedly declined to comment on how many F-1 visa students or international school partnerships have been delivered by Lumicend, so far.
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