Aladdin Bid on Manhattan Site Rejected

The Aladdin child-care centers, which must move next month from a former Redondo Beach elementary school, have lost another round in their fight to find a permanent home.

The Manhattan Beach elementary school district this week rejected a bid by the centers to lease 17 rooms at Center Middle School, which the district will close next month. Supt. Byron Burgess said Aladdin’s bid was too low, called for more rooms than the district wanted to provide and proposed a 10-year lease. The district wants to lease the rooms for less than one year, he said.

But the child-care centers, with a combined enrollment of 200 children, may still move temporarily into a dozen or so rooms at Center Middle School and Pacific Elementary School across the street, Burgess said. He said the district would be willing to lease on a room-by-room basis if Aladdin agreed to pay 84 cents per square foot for a 10-month lease.

Burgess said the district would need to work out several problems, including the possibility that there may be no room in Manhattan schools for Aladdin children who attend school during the day.

55 Attend School

“I don’t believe that we have the space for any significant number of pupils, unless we employed more teachers,” he said. About 55 Aladdin children attend Redondo schools.

Clara Whiteman, owner of the Aladdin Infant Care Center and the Aladdin Day Care Center, said Wednesday that the centers will accept the district’s offer to lease whatever rooms are available. She said she was confident that any problems can be worked out with district officials this week and predicted the infant-care center will be able to relocate by Aug. 1.

Whiteman has operated the centers at the former Fulton Elementary School in Redondo Beach. Redondo trustees voted last month to reject a bid by Aladdin for a seven-year lease at the school because it did not meet minimum bid requirements.