School Bereft of Furniture Fears Effect on Pupils

A private Sepulveda agency that runs a home and school for disturbed teen-agers has found itself using a classroom painfully short of desks, chairs and chalkboards.

The lack of classroom furnishings is the second round of ill fortune to hit the nonprofit agency in four months.

First the agency, Penny Lane, found itself without a schoolroom in January after the owner of the building from whom it rented classrooms reclaimed the space, forcing teachers to conduct classes in a garage.

That situation was resolved when Penny Lane officials rented two spacious trailers for “school houses” and installed them on a parking area near their residential facility. But the $300,000 rental and installation costs used up the agency’s budget, and there was no money left for furniture.

Furnishings Sorely Needed

Officials say furnishings are sorely needed to provide a stable environment for their severely emotionally disturbed students.

“Chairs, desks, tables, these are things that everyone takes for granted in a classroom,” said Samuel Goldman, director of education for Via Allegre School, part of Penny Lane’s residential-treatment center for neglected or abused teen-agers.

“But when you don’t have them, it is a huge problem,” Goldman said. “These kids are (emotionally) very fragile. They need to be in an appropriate school setting.”

The school serves 20 of the center’s most disturbed youths--ones who have failed in the public school system, are prone to violent verbal and physical outbursts and who do not know how to handle relationships with adults and peers. Ranging in age from 12 to 19, many have been depressed for long periods and need constant supervision.

Penny Lane, a 14-year-old, nonprofit center, has operated the school for 2 1/2 years. The school gets most of its funding from the Los Angeles, Burbank and Newhall unified school districts, where the children would normally attend school.

Youths are referred to Via Allegre from the county departments of probation, public social services and mental health or their school districts, Goldman said.

Since its inception, the school conducted courses in two classrooms, complete with desks, shelves and chalkboards, rented monthly from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 11. The Rayen Street building was convenient because it is next door to the residential hall and across the street from the center’s offices.

But, when the union needed the space to expand its own classes last November, school officials were given notice to be out by Jan. 1.

With nowhere to go, two classes and four instructors set up in a garage in the back of the center’s offices, using two folding tables, a couple of folding chairs and several plastic molded chairs from a conference room.

Since January, administrators have worked to secure trailers and have spent weeks waiting for city permits to set them up. Meanwhile, teachers say, incidents of student violence and outbursts have risen in the makeshift schoolhouse and education has suffered.

“We have 19 kids and two tables. They fight over who is going to get the nicer chairs. When the staff has a conference and needs the chairs, we have to take them out” for physical education instruction, said teacher Nancy Kwiatkowski.

Officials said that as soon as the final occupancy and electrical permits are obtained from the city, the students will move into the trailers, furniture or not.

“Anything will be better than what we have now,” one teacher said. “This morning when we came in there was a van parked in the middle of the classroom.”