NORTH HILLS : Funds Sought for Community Projects

Citing prostitutes who ply their trade next to schools and a principal who spends his own money to buy shoes for students, North Hills civic leaders pleaded Tuesday with city and state officials to help them find funds for employment, after-school and police programs in the community.

Tony Swan, president of the North Hills Community Coordinating Council, told a group of about 50 at the United Methodist Church on Rayen Street that the community’s problems are tied to high density, poverty and crime.

Swan coordinated the meeting in the hopes of recruiting movers and shakers for new subcommittees in his council that could tackle the community’s problems. Sign-up sheets were set up for a community outreach, public safety, and grants and funding subcommittees.

He said the average household income is only about $23,000, only $2,000 more than in South-Central Los Angeles. In one area of North Hills, he added, about 20,000 people live in half of a square mile.

Dan Balderrama, principal at Langdon Avenue Elementary School, said as many as three in four students need some kind of counseling to deal with problems at home.

“It’s hard to get across to a student when his mind is somewhere else,” said Balderrama, who says he sometimes makes a run to the nearby shoe store to buy students shoes out of his own pocket.

Robert Reimann, principal of Sepulveda Middle School, said he has a hard time just convincing parents to keep their children in his middle school, even though his students ranked third in the Valley among those participating in a statewide learning assessment test.

“It’s hard to sell people on the quality of education you can provide when, at the same time, there are people trying to sell their bodies across the street,” said Reimann, whose school rests near a corner of crime-ridden Sepulveda Boulevard.

Swan said he will contact those who signed up for the subcommittees for a meeting in two weeks. The meetings will provide initial ideas for funding and networking, then report back to the full North Hills Community Coordinating Council, a non-governmental citizens group.