Parents Protesting Playground Delays

Parents at a North Hollywood elementary school met Friday with school officials to protest what they say are unreasonable delays in building a playground on a vacant lot near the school.

Parents said the lot, across Camellia Avenue from Camellia Avenue Elementary School, has been a nuisance and eyesore since houses were demolished more than a year ago to make way for the playground.

“They haven’t done anything,” said Lydia Fernandez, whose two boys attend the school. “It’s been over a year.”

The school district razed all the homes fronting Camellia Avenue between Saticoy Street and Valerio Street to enlarge the school’s playground and parking lot. The school has 966 students.

Today, the 2.6-acre lot is covered with broken glass and debris, creating a dangerous area for children. It also is a favorite hangout for rowdy teen-agers, parents said. Julie McFarlane, whose home neighbors the site, said she occasionally hears gunfire coming from the lot at night.

“All this is just going to waste,” McFarlane said.

Jose Antonio Alcala, a parent who organized Friday’s meeting, said the condition of the lot has improved since it was fenced last December, but he complained that holes in the fence still let in troublemakers.

Alcala was scheduled to meet privately Friday with Elena McCue, an aide to Los Angeles school board President Roberta Weintraub, Joyce Cox, assistant principal at the school, and Maria Casillas, an administrator for the district’s operations division.

He was accompanied to the school by about a dozen parents who planned to wait for him outside. But the school officials offered to expand the meeting to include the parents.

McCue told the group that bids on the project would go out in November and that construction should be completed next June. The parents groaned at the news. McCue said she would ask district and city officials if the building schedule could be speeded up.

Staff Comments

School and Los Angeles city staff members called by The Times could not say whether the project was behind schedule.

One school district planner did say that to build the playground, Camellia must be permanently closed between Saticoy and Valerio. The district asked the city to close the street in 1986, and the Los Angeles City Council gave preliminary approval of the district’s request Jan. 27, 1987.

Closing a street typically takes more than a year, and the school district is still waiting for city officials to draw up documents needed to complete the closure of Camellia, the planner said.