GRANADA HILLS : Berliners Give $470,000 to Aid L.A. Schools

Representatives from Berlin, Germany, visited quake-scarred Kennedy High School in Granada Hills on Friday to present a donation of $470,000 collected from Berlin residents.

The donation, one of the largest for school relief since the Jan. 17 quake, was given to the nonprofit Los Angeles Education Partnership. The partnership has distributed the money to 20 Los Angeles Unified schools, including Kennedy.

The money will be used to replace instructional materials and equipment destroyed in the quake, said partnership spokesman Kevin Ota.

German officials said that gratitude for U.S. aid to Berlin after World War II, as well as a flood of television and radio advertisements, helped prompt hundreds of Berlin residents to send checks to aid the Los Angeles recovery effort.

“There were lots of small donations. That’s the emotional and impressive thing about this--many people gave just $10 or $15,” said Stefan Schlueter, deputy counsel general for Germany.

Berlin and Los Angeles have a 27-year-old sister city relationship, Schlueter said.

Although the money had already been transferred electronically, Berlin journalist Juergen Graf, who helped organize the fund-raising effort on behalf of Berlin Mayor Eberhard Diepgen, awarded a symbolic check to partnership officials during a ceremony at Kennedy.

The presentation was made before a crowd that included school officials, many Kennedy students and representatives for Mayor Richard Riordan and school board member Julie Korenstein.

Outside, students loitered amid the rubble on their lunch breaks or headed to class in one of the 60 portable buildings that have replaced permanent structures on the Kennedy campus.

Marie Kendricks, principal of Crescent Heights Elementary in Los Angeles, was present to receive her school’s portion of the donation--$20,000.

The school lost six classroom computers and a host of other tools and materials in the quake, she said.

“This makes a big difference to us,” she said.

The money the school received in state aid was not even enough to replace one computer, she added.