WOODLAND HILLS : Residents Take Aim at Retraining Center
Residents of a Woodland Hills area plan to try to block the use of a closed public middle school for a private adult education and child-care program, a project they say would disrupt their quiet neighborhood.
Officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District and Social Services Network Inc., which plans to lease the facility, said residents have gotten used to a temporary stillness at Charles Evans Hughes Jr. High School, 5607 Capistrano St., which has been closed since 1983.
“The people who live in that area have gotten used to having a public park where the school is,” said LAUSD Deputy Director of Real Estate Michael DeLuca. “But we’re planning to reopen it as a middle school in the late 1990s, so they should get used to activity there.”
About 100 residents of the area met this weekend to plan a fight against the proposal by the Los Angeles-based Social Services Network Inc. to use a section of the school grounds for retraining up to 250 out-of-work adults, while caring for as many as 150 of the students’ children.
The lease, signed in March, gives the school district about $44,000 a year for the next five years. It is not unusual for the district to lease its property to private entities, DeLuca said.
“This is a nice neighborhood,” said resident Margaret Herwig. “We don’t know what kind of people will be coming here, and we’re concerned about issues of crime, traffic and noise.”
She said many of her neighbors plan to attend a scheduled July 12 hearing on the matter before a city zoning administrator.
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