Parents that send their kids to the North Hollywood middle school are outraged after being told the school will be losing significant funding because it has “too many white students,” according to a Los Angeles ABC-affiliate.

“Outrage has grown at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, as the school faces layoffs and increased class sizes due to a law limiting funds for schools with a higher white student body,” reports ABC7. “The Los Angeles Unified School District provides more funding for schools where the white population is below 30 percent.”

How did this happen?

In the 1970’s, a “racial formula” was first implemented in order to encourage desegregation. Parents are now learning that the law can also effectively punish schools for having too high of a percentage of white students.

Parents first learned of the school budget cuts when they received a letter from the district, which explained that the percentage of white students at the school exceeded 30 percent for the last couple of years. As such, the “racial formula” required that the school must lose a portion of their funding.

The race-based policy did not sit well with parents, either, as a few offered comments to ABC7.

“For many parents, the race-based reason of ‘too many white students’ has made the cuts more difficult to swallow,” reports ABC7, which also provided quotes from parents understandably frustrated.

“When your class sizes are getting larger and you’re taking resources away from students, I mean as parents, you do want your kid to go out to college,” said one parent, Rosemary Estrada.

“Thankfully we’re going to keep our librarian. We’re going to keep our nurse, but we may lose a few teachers, but not as many as we once thought,” said Sheila Edmiston, another student’s parent.