Firm Offers to Construct Medical High School in L.A.

The Los Angeles school district is exploring a proposal to build a $15-million medical high school near the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center through a novel joint-venture agreement with a company that specializes in hospital construction and management.

According to school board member Larry Gonzalez, who represents the Eastside, district officials are negotiating with National Medical Enterprises, a Los-Angeles based health-services company, to construct a new, 1,000-student campus on school district property across the street from the County-USC facility.

“It’s a new concept,” said Gonzalez, who has frequently called for more creative methods of school financing. “Only depending on the state (for construction money) is not going to do it. We need the state and other options.”

Gerald Stevens, senior vice president of National Medical Enterprises, said the company is eager to proceed with the development because “it is one of the ways we can demonstrate to the community that we are good neighbors.”

District Would Lease

According to Gonzalez, the district is asking the firm to build a three-story high school and lease it to the district. The board member is proposing that the district pay the medical corporation in yearly installments, perhaps from the district’s general fund. At the end of the lease--which Gonzalez wants to run a minimum of 15 years--the district would own the building.

In turn, National Medical Enterprises, which is the second-largest health-services company in the nation (after Hospital Corp. of America), wants to purchase a separate 3.8-acre school district site on which to construct a for-profit, 300-bed teaching hospital for USC. District regional offices currently occupy that site, which is several blocks northwest of the county medical center on Norfolk Street.

According to Byron Kimball, who oversees district building, the district would like to sell that land, appraised at $2.8 million, to the medical firm. However, the school board would have to approve the sale, which has not been formally proposed.

The medical high school would incorporate the Lincoln High School medical magnet program, which is housed in several bungalows across from the county medical center, Gonzalez said. As a magnet school, it would have to be used to relieve overcrowding, a severe problem facing the district, and it would have to satisfy district integration requirements that call for a student body that is 70% minority and 30% white.

Magnet schools are specialized learning centers that focus on a particular field, such as computers or medicine, and constitute part of the district’s voluntary integration program. Students whose home schools are overcrowded and predominantly minority have priority over other students who wish to enroll in a magnet school.

Gonzalez said the proposed high school would help to address the problem of the under-representation of blacks and Latinos in university medical schools.

He said it also offers the district a way to expedite construction of a school, which normally takes five years because of time-consuming state financing requirements.

Moreover, Gonzalez said, a medical high school could draw upon the county medical center staff and facilities.

In addition, the USC School of Medicine is interested in sharing facilities, such as laboratories, and matching seniors with faculty members to work on research projects, Gonzalez said. USC officials could not be reached for comment.

The joint-venture proposal will be considered by the board’s building committee on Thursday. If it approves the idea, the proposal will be heard by the full board.