SCHOOL : Museum to Team Up With School : Education: Exposition Park facility joins school district in plan designed to improve science instruction.

The California Museum of Science and Industry and the Los Angeles Unified School District are in the final talking stages of a proposal to build a new museum-based elementary school in Exposition Park.

The as-yet-unnamed grammar school--on the museum grounds and physically a part of the museum--would be the centerpiece of an ambitious plan to improve the quality of elementary school science and mathematics instruction, perhaps on the national level.

For the museum, the plan--which could not possibly come to fruition before about 1996--will be part of a larger program to replace exhibition facilities shut down since last October after state officials declared them at risk of collapse in a major earthquake.

The school, which will also serve as a teacher-training and curriculum-development facility for nearby USC, would be a regular neighborhood elementary facility--not a magnet school--for children in the Exposition Park area. It would occupy the upper floor of a proposed new, two-story museum building. The first floor would house museum exhibition space and other facilities.

The new facility is also likely to be a part of a new master plan for Exposition Park, according to officials. An architectural firm to conduct the master plan study was chosen two weeks ago.

“Any project of this scale, pulling together a number of elements and large bureaucracies, will have some bumps in the road,” said museum director Jeffrey N. Rudolph. “But I think the commitment is there. The strength of the concept is sufficient. The needs of the museum and the school district mesh well.”

The concept of museum-school partnerships is slowly gaining popularity elsewhere. It took 12 years before the nation’s only existing museum-based school opened last September at the Buffalo Science Museum in western New York State. St. Louis school officials and the St. Louis Science Center have spent three years studying creation of a museum-based school.

Curriculum materials created at such schools, museum and school officials have said, could be used to improve lagging science and mathematics teaching at the elementary level across the country.

“We know that we are doing very poorly in science education internationally,” said Guilbert Hentschke, dean of the USC School of Education. “Kids’ disinclination to science comes back to the early grades. We teach very little science in elementary schools.”

The Los Angeles museum-school proposal faces an initial formal legislative milestone later today, when a state Assembly committee is scheduled to hold a final hearing on a bill to earmark more than $18 million from a 1990 seismic safety bond issue for the museum project.

However, the proposal has already run into its first political flak. The committee vote will determine if the bill, introduced by Assemblywoman Teresa Hughes (D-Los Angeles), goes to the floor for action by the full Assembly. The state Senate has scheduled no action on the legislation.

While the state State Allocation Board has guaranteed the school district up to $30 million for its share of the project, it has not fared so well with the Seismic Safety Commission.

Last Friday, the seismic commission said it opposed leapfrogging the museum over other quake-prone public buildings. The commission said a careful study of priorities for spending $300 million authorized by voters last year will not be completed for at least 18 months. Of the museum money bill, said Brian Stoner, the commission legislative liaison, “We intend to fight it, tooth and nail.”

“It is a very sad situation that we have here,” said Hughes of the commission opposition. “We are dealing with a lot of bureaucratic red tape.”

More than half of the Museum of Science and Industry is currently closed and detailed engineering studies completed earlier this month estimated costs of repairing the stricken buildings at more than $41 million. While the museum has taken no official position opposing repair--as opposed to replacement--the price tag, museum sources have said, apparently makes building something new more logical than trying to save the aged Howard F. Ahmanson and Armory buildings.

The Ahmanson building was originally constructed in 1912 to house agricultural and other exhibits sponsored by state and county agencies. The Armory building was originally a California National Guard facility. It was built in 1928 and taken over by the museum in the 1960s. While the Armory building has a steel structural frame, the Ahmanson building is supported by unreinforced masonry walls and is seen as a serious risk in a large earthquake.

About 2 million people visit the museum each year--half of them school-age children, the museum said. About 100,000 children visit the museum on school field trips, the museum said, and students at the proposed elementary school might be used as guides and as assistants in field trip programs.

By having more than 1,000 school children on the museum grounds each week day, the museum hopes to develop an important laboratory in which to develop new exhibitions tailored to the educational needs of school-age children.

“Most kids, when they enter kindergarten, have an interest in the world around them and science,” said the museum’s Rudolph. But “by the time they’re in fifth grade, about half of them are turned off to science. We see this school as a good way to combine the best of what we can do in the museum, the school district and USC.”

Rudolph said he is confident the school will come to fruition. The three-way partnership, he said, “is a done deal.”

Paul Passamatto, the school district’s associate superintendent for instruction, said that, although the museum school plan has advanced nearly to preliminary completion, the Board of Education has not yet been extensively briefed on the situation. A “concept paper” on the proposal, Passamatto said, will be prepared for approval by the board.

Museum and school officials have already visited the Buffalo museum-based school, Passamatto said. The Buffalo facility houses kindergarten through sixth grade students in a newly completed school building on the science museum grounds. Seventh and eighth grade students of the same school attend classes in a facility on the grounds of the local zoo. Children participate in programs at both the museum and the zoo.

Passamatto said the museum school would also give the district an opportunity to test computer literacy instructional programs. He said that, if the science and industry school is built and succeeds academically, the district may develop additional museum-based elementary schools.

Dominic Shambra, the district’s director of capital facility assessment and special projects, said that if the project goes forward, an architectural competition will be held to try to get an innovative design that could serve as a prototype of museum-based schools.