VENTURA : New Academy May Lose Its Site

Administrators of a new Ventura school that has had early success dealing with troubled teen-agers are worried that they may have to find a new home for the program.

Gang members and juvenile delinquents are among the 12 emotionally troubled youths who make up the small student body at Brighton Academy, Principal Suzanne I. Lawley said.

“We take the worst kids,” Lawley said. “It takes a special kind of place to accommodate them. It would be a shame if we had to start all over again.”

The Ventura developers who own the property on Telegraph and Day roads recently won approval to build an 18,000-square-foot mall for offices and shops on the 2.5-acre site.

Developer Ron Pulito, who owns the property with realtor Don L. Carlton, said their plans do not rule out the possibility that the school may buy the building when the lease runs out.

“This just gives me more choices if at the end of their lease they decide not to buy the property,” Pulito said. “It’s a backup plan.”

The state-certified academy receives most of its funding from the county superintendent of schools, officials said. Brighton moved into the building, a 1920s schoolhouse, in July with a 27-month lease. The fall session started in September.

Pulito said he rented the property to Brighton after school administrators approached him. “It was a good cause,” he said, adding that school officials were aware when they moved in of his plans for commercial development of the site.

Since moving in, the school has spent close to $30,000 on fire alarms and other improvements, said Roberta Morgan, executive director of the Emerald Foundation, the nonprofit organization that runs the academy. Morgan said she was aware that the developers were planning to build on the property, but she hopes to buy it before the lease runs out.

The foundation is applying for state and federal grants to raise the $1.4 million Morgan said Pulito is asking for the property.

If the foundation is not able to raise the money, Morgan said, the school will begin the difficult task of looking for a new site. “You can’t just simply go rent commercial space or buy space for a school like this,” she said.

It took more than a year to gain approval for the school from various city and state agencies, she said. “You need all kinds of special permission, and right now there’s nothing else out there beckoning us. It’s a tremendous problem.”