The bad news just keeps coming for the Culver City Unified School District, only this time, the state is not to blame.

Instead, the latest villain is the Los Angeles Unified School District, which informed bordering school districts March 17 that it will no longer grant inter-district permits except in three specified, narrow categories.

Currently, CCUSD is home to more than 1,400 students via such permits. Should LAUSD follow through with this plan — outlined in a letter by Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines — the effect could be devastating locally.

“It means a completely different district,” said Dr. Myrna Rivera Coté, CCUSD’s superintendent, following the district’s board of education meeting Tuesday, March 23. “If it goes through the way it looks right now … I’m looking at closing schools. We just won’t have enough students to sustain our employees, our funding … we will be a small, small school district.

“We’ll deal with it, but we will not be the Culver Unified that we have become today. And I just think that’s so sad, because we’re a great school district.”

During Tuesday’s meeting, Andrew Sotelo, CCUSD’s assistant director of pupil services, offered a presentation explaining to the board and members of the audience just what is taking place. Simply put, LAUSD is seeking to put the overwhelming majority of students currently on inter-district permits — a number that tops out at more than 12,000 for the 2009-10 school year — back in LAUSD schools in order to help the ongoing budget crunch that has seized California public schools.

Conversely, the neighboring schools who currently accept the most inter-district students would be severely hampered by the loss of state funding that accompanies those pupils. That’s especially true for CCUSD, which is second only to Torrance in that department.

The lone permits that will be granted by LAUSD are for those students whose parents are employed in Culver City, students who are entering the final year at their school of attendance (fifth, eighth and 12th grades) and students who are unable to gain access to certain specialized programs in LAUSD schools, such as Spanish immersion or Culver City’s Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts.

While the entire process is a cause of concern for Coté, most troubling may be the fact that Cortines did not notify inter-permit districts of the decision until after the state-mandated March 15 deadline to issue layoff notices to certified staff — despite the fact Cortines penned a letter regarding his decision as far back as Feb. 16, and also reportedly held talks with the LAUSD Board of Education regarding the plan in January.

During the board meeting, Coté referred to Cortines’ actions as “cutthroat tactics,” and she did not back off those remarks during her later interview with the News.

“I’m going to stick with that,” Coté said. “For him to send that out on March 17 put every district that receives a large number of those LAUSD students in fiscal chaos.

“The issue is we’ll have the employees this next year, but we won’t have the kids.”

The fact that CCUSD now finds itself in this situation did not come as a surprise to at least one board member. Scott Zeidman offered that he discussed this very issue during his school board campaign more than two years ago, leading to a case of “I told you so” on Tuesday night.

“One day they’re going to turn the spigot off and we’re going to be left holding the bag,” said Zeidman, recounting his previous claims that CCUSD needed to move away from its dependence on inter-district students.

The question now is where the district goes from here. Coté admitted CCUSD will need to obtain legal advice to see if it has any recourse, and during his presentation Sotelo offered that the district needs to continue to take care of its part of the equation regarding the issuing of inter-district permits should either the LAUSD plan fall through or a large number of appeals ultimately be granted by the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

Another suggestion bro-ached by members of the audience was petitioning for CCUSD to become a state “district of choice.” However, several board members made it clear they would not endorse such a move, saying the influx of inter-district students via that route would more than be offset by the stringent rules CCUSD would be forced to operate under as required by the state.

“It’s too restrictive. It cuffs our hands,” said Steven Gourley, the board’s president. “We can cherry pick right now. Cherry picking is a good thing. … I would like to be in that position for years and years and years.

“I don’t want to have more people that we can’t afford to teach come into the district.”