District Considers Reopening Vacant West Valley School

The Los Angeles school district is considering reopening at least one West San Fernando Valley school that was closed because of declining enrollment, a move that would help accommodate some of the 13,300 new students that it is predicted will enroll in district schools this fall.

Associate Supt. Jerry Halverson said a report by the district’s staff outlining the options for providing classroom space for the new students should be presented to the Board of Education in about two weeks. These options include placing bungalows on the grounds of crowded schools, placing some schools on year-round sessions and redesigning school boundaries.

Reopening one of the eight now-empty West Valley schools also is “one of the scenarios” the district staff has been studying, Halverson said. He added, however, that it is not certain the staff will recommend that a West Valley school be reopened.

Tempers Flared

The uncertainty of the empty West Valley schools’ fate prompted tempers to flare at two public hearings that the Districtwide Underutilized School Sites Committee has held in the West Valley during the past two weeks.

A hearing at Holmes Junior High School in Northridge Tuesday night was adjourned early after repeated interruptions, shouts and derogatory remarks were made to the committee by parents of former students from Prairie Street Elementary School. They were still angry at the 1984 closing of the Northridge school.

James Harris, one of a handful of parents who spoke at the hearing, shouted “you’re disgusting” to the committee, which he charged used “political manipulation” to get the school board to close the school.

Harris and other parents have complained that the loss of West Valley schools has forced their children to travel great distances to other elementary schools and has created a void in their communities. Many parents said they moved to their present homes because of the high academic reputations of the neighborhood schools.

CSUN Officials Interested

Representatives of the California State University, Northridge, also appeared at the hearing to express interest in leasing the Prarie Street school grounds. The CSUN representatives said they would use the elementary school’s auditorium as a lecture hall and locate some special programs at the school, including deaf studies and a computer software library.

An April 23 hearing at Parkman Junior High School in Woodland Hills was quieter than Tuesday’s meeting. Although many in the Parkman audience muttered among themselves in anger because of a plan naming the Collier Street Elementary School in Woodland Hills as the only West Valley school to be sold, only one of the speakers from the neighborhood raised his voice when addressing the committee.

One reason for the Collier-area residents’ polite tone was the fact that many of them had been through a similar fight. In 1983, Collier School was almost leased by a group that called itself “Day Star Academy.” The group wanted to establish a combined primary and secondary private school with about 600 students that would take a “holistic” approach to education.

Nervous about traffic congestion and the prospect of high school-age students on the campus, Collier’s neighbors successfully lobbied the City of Los Angeles Board of Zoning Appeals to issue an extremely restrictive, conditional-use permit to the proposed school. Day Star officials finally decided not to lease the school.

Buying, Leasing Overtures

Representatives of several organizations that would like to buy or lease the empty schools have appeared at both Valley hearings.

Warren Howell said his Southern Baptist congregation was interested in leasing two Canoga Park elementary schools--Enadia Way and Highlander Road.

Steve Viner of the Advanced Studies Foundation said his organization was interested in starting a joint venture with the Los Angeles school district. He wanted to use the Hughes Junior High campus in Woodland Hills as the site for a high school for graduates of public junior high school programs for the highly gifted. There now are no high schools with such programs.

Beth Alexander said she would like to lease an entire school or part of one for an after-school child-care center that would feature activities and counseling sessions for latchkey children.

Shelter Idea Advanced

John Maxon, representing the Valley Mayor’s Fund for the Homeless, wanted to lease one of the schools to use as a shelter for women, children and the working homeless. “People housed in this facility would not be damaged people with shopping carts and bags,” Maxon said.

But residents attending the Parkman hearing did not respond favorably to the idea of turning a school in an affluent neighborhood into a center for homeless people or a satellite site for the MacLaren Child Center, the county’s emergency shelter for abused and neglected children.

“Using the schools for these kinds of uses will affect our property values and, if our property values diminish, it will lessen the taxes that the County of Los Angeles receives,” Woodland Hills resident Robert Harwood told the committee.