Pacoima Preschool Facing Eviction Finds a Temporary Home

Escuela de la Gente, a Pacoima preschool threatened with closure because of an impending mini-mall development, has found a temporary location and will remain open, a school official said Thursday.

Administrator Ruben Rodriguez said the Kinder Kare Children’s Center on Kelowna Street--just blocks from Escuela de la Gente, or School of the People--has offered to rent its gym, one or two classrooms and a kitchen for several months.

The remaining hurdle is approval of the temporary arrangement by the Los Angeles County Department of Social Services, which licenses child-care centers. Rodriguez said he is completing an application to submit to the department for a change of location.

If all goes well, Rodriguez said, the school should move to the new site several days before April 24, when the court has ordered it to leave its present location.

Escuela de la Gente, which was opened a decade ago to care for children of the northeast San Fernando Valley’s poor, serves 75 children. Its lease on its building on Van Nuys Boulevard ran out in the fall, and the school received an eviction notice in December.

Landlord Keith Markovitch is selling the property to a mini-mall developer, and the school’s eviction was a condition of sale. In March, an Encino Municipal Court commissioner ruled that the school must leave and pay the landlord’s attorney fees.

Rodriguez said the school still plans to fight the order to pay about $7,000 in attorney fees but will not appeal the eviction decision.

The school is close to signing a lease for a permanent location in a Pacoima Methodist church but will have to spend several months converting the building to classrooms and laying foundations for portable classrooms, which belong to the state.

Rodriguez said the school still does not know what it will do with its portable classrooms on the Van Nuys Boulevard property until the permanent location is ready.