PACOIMA : Plan Would Reopen Prairie Street School

Officials from San Fernando Valley’s first charter school said Wednesday that they would like to reopen an elementary school to entice white students back to the system.

The unusual proposal to reopen Prairie Street school, which has been closed for nearly 10 years, came during a meeting Wednesday between the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center and Los Angeles Unified School District officials. The Vaughn school, which broke off from the district last year, is seeking greater financial independence.

Yvonne Chan, the school principal, said the staff wants to reopen Prairie Street School in Northridge, next to CSUN, to lure white students back to the system and to operate a desegregation program.

“We want to run our own program,” said Chan, whose campus is made up of mostly Latino students. “We want to bring back the white students who are now in private schools.”

Prairie was closed by the school district in June, 1984, when the Board of Education closed about a dozen campuses because of declining enrollments. Some of the campuses are now being leased to private schools, others have been sold.

Chan said the district has set up another meeting with her to discuss several financial issues and the Prairie proposal. The school, which says it saved $1.2 million this year, is hoping to get better funding next year.

District officials said the meeting Wednesday was the first to begin hammering out the funding questions for Vaughn. Last year, bitter and protracted funding disputes resulted in Vaughn receiving about the same funding per student as other elementary campuses.

“We are like the pain-in-the-neck students asking a lot of questions or the inquisitive students who keep on asking and asking,” Chan said. “We generated a lot of questions and now they have to respond.”