The Reality Trump Denies: L.A. Needs to Build Schools : Education: The battle over the Ambassador site is not one of cost. It’s about land use, and where children fall on this society’s priority list.
The headlines should make it easy to choose sides in the tug-of-war over how to use the Ambassador Hotel site. But this is not the case. Trump Wilshire Associates has hired a veritable army of public-relations types, lobbyists, attorneys, architects, real-estate brokers and consultants. This army has confounded and confused the debate when the reality is quite simple.
The issue is the need to build more schools. That’s it. Period.
Trump’s army says the issue is cost. The fact is that there are no inexpensive sites for new schools in Los Angeles. When the Los Angeles Unified School District goes looking for land in the city, the typical price tag is $2 million to $3 million an acre. The 23.5-acre Ambassador site was on the market for five years before it sold for about $64 million in 1989. The land’s current value--about $73 million--is what it would cost to buy a decent high-school site anywhere in Los Angeles.
For example, if building a new high school required the destruction of large numbers of homes and apartments, the district would have to pay relocation payments to displaced residents. This cost would offset any savings from a less expensive site. Actually, of the more than 45 sites considered for the new high school, the Ambassador site is below average in cost.
Land cost could be further reduced by mixing commercial and school uses. The district is willing to allow commercial development on the Wilshire Boulevard end of the Ambassador site. The school would face 7th Street or 8th Street. The site could also accommodate such needed city services as a branch library or a police substation. The school district has always been willing to try out this approach to siting the school, but Trump Wilshire has turned us down cold.
Every school day, 4,500 high-school students are bused from the area that would be served by the new high school. These students are on the road up to two hours a day, or 360 hours a school year. They need a school in their neighborhood; they have a right to have one. They should not have to spend the equivalent of 15 weeks of school time on a bus every year. A new school must be built for these Hispanic, Asian and African American students, just as the district built new schools in the San Fernando Valley when overcrowding there reached a crisis point 20 to 30 years ago.
It is primarily the state’s responsibility to pay for new schools. A seven-member board--the State Allocation Board--sets the rules and procedures for districts to receive money to build schools. The L.A. district has followed the rules. It did an exhaustive study of potential sites, selected one and received the approval of the State Department of Education.
The district has plenty of “priority points,” which are based on the degree of overcrowding in the schools. At present, the state is allocating money for construction projects with 150 or more priority points. The mid-Wilshire Ambassador site has 341 such points, more than twice the total required for state funding.
Thus the district is puzzled why there is any controversy about its application. When a project before the State Allocation Board met all the state’s criteria, it has always been funded--until now. When a local district settled on a site, the state has provided the money to buy the land and asked no questions--until now. Why have the rules changed in the middle of the game?
The battle over the Ambassador site is not about Donald Trump, though its current owners probably like the glossy jet-set image he brings to their project. It is about land use; it is about where children fall on this society’s priority list. Some have said that the Ambassador real estate is too prime for a school. Some have said that if a community needs revitalizing, the last thing it would want is a high school. Still others say “those” students shouldn’t expect to have a sports field and a gym like students on the West Side and in the Valley. Some even say that a high school in the neighborhood would lead to more drug use, crime and graffiti.
What all these folks seem to be saying is that our society would be better off without children. I don’t believe that is a majority view in Los Angeles. The education of our children is central to revitalizing not just the mid-Wilshire area but our entire city.
The district will succeed in its attempt to build a high school on the Ambassador site. It is feasible. It is cost-effective. Most important, it meets the needs of the students who live in the neighborhood.
