Earthquake: The Long Road Back : Panel Addresses Class Shortage : Education: Task force confronts lack of inner-city space and earthquake’s impact.

A coalition of educators and community leaders announced the formation of an emergency group Wednesday to help the Los Angeles Unified School District find immediate and long-term solutions to its school building crisis, intensified by severe quake damage at San Fernando Valley schools.

Efforts to rebuild and repair up to 20 hard-hit schools in the Valley must also address the critical problem of the lack of space in inner-city schools, coalition leaders said.

“We need to make opportunities out of crumbled buildings,” said Mayor Richard Riordan, who joined the meeting for a time. “The facility problems in our schools has only escalated in the aftermath of the quake.”

Inner-city campuses are so overcrowded that 18,000 students are forced to take buses to faraway schools with open seats. The schools with space are primarily in the West Valley, where the worst quake damage occurred.

The panel agreed that the emergency at hand calls for the community to embrace new ways of thinking about school buildings. A vacant warehouse, offices, even a mini-mall could be transformed into classroom space so children would have the option of attending school closer to home.

The task force was pulled together by LEARN--Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now--which is leading the district’s major educational reform plan. The group includes prominent architects, attorneys, developers, corporate executives and neighborhood activists.

“We are calling on the district to rethink the notion of what a school should look like,” said John Mack, president of the Los Angeles and a co-chairman of a LEARN task force that studied the district’s facilities problems. “There are many major challenges, many priorities facing our city. But I believe there can be no greater priority than to make sure every student is effectively educated.”

No one suggested that safety at alternative school sites should be a secondary concern. But several in the coalition said that emergency state legislation will probably be needed to give the district the ability to cut through the volumes of building and zoning laws that regulate school construction and locations.

In other developments Wednesday, Supt. Sid Thompson announced that 15 more quake-damaged schools will open today as school officials continue their scramble to make schools safe enough to occupy.

In total, 47 campuses, all in the Valley, are still closed, leaving 48,000 students at home. Thompson said he hopes to have the number of closed campuses whittled down to the 20s by Friday. Most of the closed campuses, he said, are still without utilities.

Five schools--Kennedy High School, El Camino Real High School, Northridge Middle School, Lawrence Middle School and Van Gogh Elementary School--are closed indefinitely. Students who attend those campuses should expect to be out of class until the middle of next week.

Thompson will announce plans early next week for alternative classrooms for those students, which will include housing some in portable bungalows. As a last resort, students will be bused to other campuses.

Attendance throughout the district Wednesday hovered in the low 80% range, about 10% below normal. More students returned to Valley schools, where attendance was estimated to be between 65% and 70%, a significant jump from Tuesday, when less than half of the students showed up.

“Please, please bring your children back to school. It’s good for them to be with their friends and teachers. It’s good for them to feel secure,” Thompson implored parents. “I want you to know that those school buildings are built to specifications that are more rigid than your home. We are not going to open schools unless they are ready.”

Thompson has said that he seeks to keep children at the schools they attended before the earthquake, to reduce the upheaval in their lives.

At the facilities task force meeting on Wednesday, however, he agreed with the panel of leaders that the district must also use the quake as an opportunity to address the needs of the displaced students, rather than focusing on broken buildings.

LEARN President Mike Roos said the group’s blueprint, adopted by the school board in March, lays out long-terms plans for making better use of school facilities. The district cannot afford to pass up the opportunity to implement this branch of the plan, he said.

“Why on earth would we want to reconstruct the same footprint of a structure that is dysfunctional for so many children?” asked Roos, referring to the district’s lack of space in the inner city and abundance of classrooms in the suburbs.

The LEARN plan calls on the district push for state legislation to allow commercial buildings to be used for classrooms, allow schools to locate in mixed-use developments and explore using the district’s own vast amount of office space for classrooms.

Members of the panel agreed to take a two-pronged approach to the problem. They agreed to help the district meet its immediate needs of classroom space by either finding appropriate office or other space.

Architects and planners said they are prepared to help the district with more long-term design needs for constructing non-traditional school buildings in the inner city.

Although the brainstorming session produced a number of provocative ideas for structures in which to educate children, actually building the new schools could present complex problems.

There are neighborhood development plans to consider, strict zoning laws that regulate the location of schools and fears among some neighborhood associations that schools attract traffic, noise and rambunctious youths to their communities.

Several community leaders suggested that planners should not rush to the conclusion that every parent has a negative view of school busing. Several thousand, in fact, voluntarily bus their children to schools in faraway neighborhoods in an effort to give them a better education, leaders said.

Also, the children who are bused to West Valley campuses every day have stabilized dwindling enrollments in those schools, allowing the schools to keep enough students to offer strong academic programs and maintain teaching staff. At several high schools, nearly half the enrollment is from outside the neighborhood.

Closed Schools

As of late Wednesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District said 47 schools--all in the San Fernando Valley--will not reopen today; parts of some of these campuses may be cleared for reopening later this week, and others may remain closed much longer. Closures include any magnet schools on the same campus. District officials will update the school closure list daily. Parents should call their child’s school for more information.

* Andasol Avenue Elem., Northridge

* Beckford Avenue Elem., Northridge

* Blythe Street Elem., Reseda

* Calahan Street Elem., Northridge

* Canoga Park Elem.

* Canoga Park Children’s Center

* Cantara Street Elem., Reseda

* Castlebay Lane Elem., Northridge

* Chatsworth Park Elem., Chatsworth

* Chatsworth High, Stony Point Continuation School

* Cleveland High, Magnet School and Aliso Continuation School, Reseda

* Danube Avenue Elem., Granada Hills

* Dixie Canyon Avenue Elem., Sherman Oaks

* El Camino Real High, Adult School and Leonis Continuation School, Woodland Hills

* El Oro Way Elem., Granada Hills

* Encino Elem.

* Frost Middle School, Granada Hills

* Germaine Street Elem., Chatsworth

* Granada Hills High and Magnet School

* Hale Middle School, Woodland Hills

* Hamlin Street Elem., Canoga Park

* Patrick Henry Middle School, Granada Hills

* Oliver W. Holmes Middle School, Northridge

* Kennedy High, Adams Continuation School and Adult School, Granada Hills

* Kester Avenue Elem. and Magnet School, Van Nuys

* Lanai Road Elem., Encino

* Lawrence Middle School, Chatsworth

* Mayall Street Elem., Sepulveda

* Melvin Avenue Elem., Reseda

* Morningside Elem., San Fernando

* Napa Street Elem., Northridge

* Northridge Middle School

* North Valley Occupational Center, Mission Hills

* Portola Middle School, Tarzana

* Reseda Elem.

* San Fernando Elem.

* San Fernando Middle School, San Fernando

* Sutter Middle School, Canoga Park

* Tarzana Elem.

* Topeka Drive Elem., Northridge

* Tulsa Street Elem., Granda Hills

* Valley Alternative, Van Nuys

* Vanalden Avenue Elem. and Children’s Center, Reseda

* Van Gogh Street Elem., Granada Hills

* Vintage Street Fundamental Magnet, Sepulveda

* West Valley Occupational Center, Woodland Hills

* Winnetka Avenue Elem., Canoga Park

* Public information lines: (213) 625-4000 (English); (213) 625-4643 (Spanish)

* Elementary schools: (818) 997-2550

* Junior high schools: (818) 904-2036

* High schools: (213) 742-7501

Source: Los Angeles Unified School District