UCLA Plan Blasted as Donor ‘Ego Trip’ : Education: State board president says most at campus do not want to move elementary lab school to Santa Monica. Land would be used for graduate school financed by $15-million gift.

The president of the State Board of Education said Friday that UCLA’s controversial plan to move its on-campus laboratory elementary school to Santa Monica results from an “ego trip” by Los Angeles attorney and businessman John E. Anderson.

Anderson has given the university $15 million to build a new Graduate School of Management on the lab school site on Sunset Boulevard.

Board President Joseph D. Carrabino, who is an emeritus professor at UCLA’s management school, told the monthly meeting of the state board that most teachers, parents and alumni do not want the lab school to be moved but that Anderson insisted on a “choice location on Sunset Boulevard” for the graduate school that bears his name.

To make this possible, Carrabino said, UCLA officials decided to move the lab school to Ocean Park, at the southern end of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.

“It’s a big ego thing, nothing more,” Carrabino said.

Attempts to reach Anderson were unsuccessful.

The State Board of Education was discussing the matter because some state policy issues might be involved if the Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School is transferred from the UCLA campus to a public school district.

UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor Murray L. Schwartz said, “It’s not true that we are moving UES (University Elementary School) in order to make room for the Graduate School of Management.”

In a telephone interview, Schwartz said, “This is not a done deal, but we are contemplating it” because UCLA education researchers could do more to solve American public education problems in a regular school setting than in the secluded campus lab school.

If UCLA and the Santa Monica-Malibu district reach an agreement, the UCLA Graduate School of Education faculty will continue to run the school but it will be financed by the state.

If the deal falls through, “we can continue UES on the present site,” Schwartz said.

However, he warned that eventually the crowded, 450-acre UCLA campus will not be able to afford the luxury of operating an elementary school for only 450 youngsters on a nine-acre site.

Dean J. Clayburn La Force of the Graduate School of Management said “there’s not a shred of truth to the claim that we’re eliminating the elementary school.” He said “only a part of the southern edge of the (UES) campus” would be needed for the new buildings.

La Force also denied that Anderson had insisted on a “choice location” on Sunset Boulevard for the school.

When Anderson gave the $15 million in 1987, it was the largest single gift from an individual to any University of California campus.

La Force said he “could not imagine” why Carrabino made his remarks.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young called him to ask if there were legal barriers or other problems involved in shifting the lab school to Santa Monica.

Honig directed staff members to look into it because, “if the university, regardless of the right or wrong of it, makes a request, then we have an obligation to help clear the way.”

But Honig and state board members soon ran into a hornet’s nest of criticism, in letters and phone calls, from opponents of the lab school move.