Group Asks UCLA to Keep School : Elementary Pupils on Bruin Campus

Parents and other supporters are rallying to keep the Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School (UES) on the UCLA campus despite a proposal to move the innovative school to Santa Monica.

“Most people think the best solution is to stay at UCLA,” said Kathy Seal, a UES parent who cited preservation of the school’s autonomy as a major reason for staying put.

Seal is one of a growing number of concerned parents, staff and others who hope to persuade UCLA to keep the unique elementary school on campus, where it functions as a laboratory school for the Graduate School of Education.

Seal said the group is considering other options, but said that most UES supporters favor leaving the elementary school on its present site, preferably as part of an expanded School of Education complex. Among the virtues of the existing school site are redwood trees, Stone Canyon Creek and several buildings by noted architect Richard Neutra.

Founded in 1882

UES has 450 students between the ages of 4 and 12, taught by a faculty of 24. Founded in 1882, it has been located since 1947 in a wooded area near the Sunset Boulevard entrance to the university’s Westwood campus.

Seal and other observers have been concerned about the fate of the elementary school, which has an international reputation for educational innovation, since UCLA announced plans to build the $67-million Anderson Graduate School of Management on part of the elementary school’s nine-acre site.

Construction of the new management building is slated to begin in 1991.

Last fall, parents were surprised to learn that the Graduate School of Education was talking with the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District about possible relocation of UES to the Ocean Park section of Santa Monica. Some parents feared the proposal was evidence that UCLA values the land UES sits on more than the school itself.

Since they discovered that a move was being discussed, UES parents and staff have repeatedly expressed concern that the experimental school might lose its unique character if it became part of a public school district. Parents have said they would be willing to raise millions, if necessary, to save the school.

Letter to Dean

Earlier this month, UES’s parent group, the Family School Alliance, sent a letter to Lewis C. Solmon, dean of the UCLA School of Education, outlining its reasons for opposing the proposed move.

The letter pointed out that alternatives other than affiliation with the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District had not been explored. “We believe that other options exist that are far better educationally, financially and symbolically, that do not risk compromising the laboratory school’s autonomy and effectiveness,” the alliance wrote.

The parents group endorsed as “the most compelling plan” the building of new facilities for the Graduate School of Education on or near the present UES site. To do so, they said, would provide a symbolic affirmation of the university’s commitment to “pre-collegiate education.”

As its supporters point out, UES is the last laboratory school--one where new theories, teaching methods and curricula can be tried out and where academic research is done--in California.

Its alumni include Harvard University President Derek Bok and the children and grandchildren of several movie moguls, but it is also one of the few schools in the United States that chooses its student body to reflect the ethnic and economic makeup of the country as a whole. According to parent Richard Kahlenberg, who has an 11-year-old son at UES, the school’s diversity is reflected in the vehicles that drop students off in the morning and pick them up after school. “There’s everything from ‘Grapes of Wrath’ to ‘Dynasty,’ with more ‘Grapes of Wrath’ than ‘Dynasty,’ ” he said.

Team teaching, written evaluations instead of grades, a hands-on approach to learning and multiple-age grouping of children have characterized the school for decades. “We’ve been doing a lot of things that are thoughtful and innovative that could not be done without more difficulty within a school district,” said UES teacher Karolynne Gee. “I think all the red tape would be an impediment to our being effective.”

Gee said she feared a move might threaten such important UES faculty benefits as paid time for planning. She also noted that students would no longer have easy access to UCLA facilities such as the sculpture garden or to its human resources, including students from the university’s architecture school who helped UES students build footbridges over the gully on the school site.

“All schools should be like UES,” said alumna Heidi Brandt, whose 7-year-old daughter now attends the school. As both a student and parent, she said, “you very definitely feel that you are part of the process of experimentation in education.”

Kathy Seal, whose 8-year-old son is a student, praised the school for the values it teaches. “What I like about UES,” Seal said, “is that the kids learn to love learning and to think. They develop a passion for intellectual things.” She also cited the beauty of the site as an attraction, albeit a less important one. “It even smells nice,” she said.

Remain on UCLA Campus

The plan favored by the parents was described by UES director Richard C. Williams in a memo sent several weeks ago to faculty and administration of the Graduate School of Education. The Williams plan would have UES remain on the UCLA campus, where it would be joined by other units of the Graduate School of Education, including a new center “whose overall thrust is to improve the practice of education.”

A virtue of the plan is that it would address the concern of Solmon and others in the education school that UES is not fully integrated into the life of the graduate school. “The faculty have to want to do research there,” Solmon said. “The fact that it is a wonderful school is very important, but that alone is not a reason for UCLA to run it.”

Solmon has assured parents and UES staff that no decision about the move has been made. He said he and his staff are still collecting information on the pros and cons of relocating the primary school. The education faculty will be asked for an advisory vote no sooner than the fall, he said. The decision will ultimately be made by UCLA Chancellor Charles Young.

Solmon and others point out that no matter what the decision, the school will probably stay where it is for at least two more years. Whatever the fate of UES, UCLA is going ahead with a plan to modify the school site to give back to UES the facilities that will be displaced by the new management school.

3 Buildings Eliminated

The UES redesign will mean the elimination of three small classroom buildings designed by Richard Neutra’s firm, Neutra & Alexander, in 1957.

While acknowledging the historic importance of the buildings, UCLA has decided they must be razed, despite the fact that the Neutra Archive is located at UCLA. The doomed buildings, which will probably be torn down in 18 months, will be videotaped and otherwise documented, UCLA planner Mark Horne said.

While several other Neutra structures will remain on the UES campus, no one is very happy about the prospect of losing the classroom pavilions, including the architect in charge of the UES renovation project, Barton Phelps. “I’m trying to imagine what Richard Neutra would want to do if he were in my place,” Phelps said. The architect finally decided Neutra would have opted for new buildings. As Phelps pointed out, “he was a modernist.”