Opposition Mounts in Tujunga Against Planned High School for Troubled Teens

The proposed relocation of a high school for troubled teen-agers has prompted opposition from residents of a hillside Tujunga community, who say they are worried that the school will bring an increase in crime and drugs .

The Erickson Center for Adolescent Advancement, now located in an industrial area of Tarzana, has proposed a move to the 15-acre Tujunga site of the Sunair Home for Asthmatic Children, a nonprofit facility that closed earlier this year due to a dwindling patient population and new government funding regulations.

Leaders of a petition drive have collected 125 signatures of residents near the McGroarty Road site protesting the relocation.

The Erickson Center, a special education high school and residential program for 13- to 17-year-olds with “emotional and life problems,” is seeking a conditional use permit from the City of Los Angeles to use the facility for the treatment of up to 82 mentally handicapped students, with live-in facilities for up to 54 teen-agers.

A group of investors plans to purchase the Sunair property and lease it to the Erickson Center, which is a nonprofit corporation, according to Donna Wilkerson-Kendall, a spokeswoman for the Erickson school.

Wilkerson-Kendall said school officials have scheduled open meetings at the Sunair campus next Tuesday and Thursday to reassure residents that the facility would be compatible with the neighborhood.

“It’s a perfect setting for the kids, and we want to prove that we have the ability and staff to cope with whatever comes up,” Kendall said.

But they will have a difficult time winning over neighbors like Richard King, 75, a retired printer who has lived 200 feet from the Sunair site for six years.

‘Just Too Overpowering’

“Something like this would just be too overpowering to the community,” King said. “The Sunair school didn’t have so many students, and they were only there during the day. And they were asthmatic, not uncontrollable teen-agers. I’m greatly in favor of the treatment of these kids. I just don’t want it down here.”

Thomas Overlander, 46, an attorney who has lived in the area for eight years, said he is concerned about the students bringing drugs into the community. “I have kids, and I sure don’t want them exposed to that. I’m against it,” Overlander said.

Arline De Sanctis, a field deputy for Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs who represents the area and received the petition, said she is trying to help mediate the dispute. De Sanctis said fears of residents are prompted in part by their experience with the Behavior Research Institute, a nearby center for autistic youths that uses controversial “aversion therapy,” which includes immediate punishment for misbehavior. “There’s screeching and screaming coming from that area all the time, and the residents are frightened and tired,” she said. “They just don’t know what to expect.”

But not all of the nearby homeowners are opposed to the relocation. Sue Kilpatrick, 30, who has lived across from the site for six years, said she toured the Erickson Center “and was very impressed. It’s very well staffed and well run, and the kids don’t seem like they’re a problem.”

“I think the whole neighborhood is so burned out on the autistic children that they don’t want anything else in the neighborhood,” Kilpatrick said. “Those boys are loud . . . But that’s not the case with this new school. I think it will be OK.”