Dimming the Light : Education: Innovative tutoring program for underachieving children is on hold after bank forces its sponsor to declare bankruptcy.
The shadow of a grinch dressed in banker’s pin stripes hangs over a pioneering educational program that has made learning fun for dozens of underachieving children.
Project EEXCEL gained national attention two years ago when it opened Academy Hall, a South Los Angeles apartment building that provided the children of its low-income residents with intensive after-school tutoring and the possibility of scholarships to USC.
Now the tutoring program is on hold, along with the hope that the children will ever make it to USC. The reason is that ITT Commercial Finance Corp., a real estate subsidiary of a conglomerate with $70 billion in assets, has forced the group that owns the building and sponsors the project to declare bankruptcy over a relatively minor tax dispute.
The ambitious effort to help children escape the cycle of poverty that ensnares their parents has had some previous ups and downs, and some services promised initially--a day-care program, for example--have not materialized.
But for several hours each week, what children such as 14-year-old Michael Robertson have been getting is one-on-one attention from USC tutors. And the payoff, in some cases, has been dramatic: This past September, Michael, a ninth-grader, could not read. Now he can.
“It’s been a big help to my son,” said Diane Rankin, Michael’s mother. “Before, he was getting Ds and Fs and now he’s up to Cs and Bs.”
A spokesman for the lender, who acknowledged that he knew very little about the issue, declined to comment on his company’s action or to explain the reason behind it. Other officials who are involved in the matter referred all questions to the spokesman.
“They just have a screw-you attitude,” said Kent Salveson, the San Juan Capistrano developer who, with a partner, founded Project EEXCEL. “They just don’t care. They don’t care about the program or the kids. They don’t care about anything but getting the property and selling it at a profit.”
The cost of the tutoring project, the acronym of which stands for Educational Excellence for Children With Environmental Limitations, is about $10,000 a semester. Salveson said that because of mounting legal fees and other unanticipated expenses related to the tax dispute, the income from the building barely covers expenses.
And none is left for extras--even the sunny, computer-equipped classroom well-stocked with books and art supplies that is a haven for children who are accustomed to violence and other urban ills born of poverty.
Paul Carson, the principal of West Athens School where many of the children are enrolled, said the tutoring is desperately needed in a part of the city that is often unforgiving. Asked to depict their neighborhood, most of the Project EEXCEL students drew scenes of armed robberies and drive-by shootings. Asked to show their dreams, they drew pictures of themselves wearing graduation gowns.
“I just wish some others would put something back into the community . . . to show that they are genuinely concerned,” Carson said. “These kids have a leg up on other kids.”
Legal papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by ITT show that it loaned Salveson $1.55 million in 1992 when he built the 47-unit apartment house on South Vermont Avenue at 120th Street. Salveson said he has never missed a payment on the loan.
What is at issue now is about $57,000 in property taxes. Salveson said the nonprofit status of his company and the below-market rents he charges exempt him from those taxes. But his company has yet to apply for that relief and the taxes are overdue. Salveson said he is collecting the documentation needed to support the application.
In September, the bank paid the tax obligation and then demanded immediate reimbursement. Salveson refused, saying the money was not owed. The bank successfully went to court in November to foreclose on the loan and ask for the appointment of a $125-per-hour receiver to manage the property until it could be sold.
To avoid that, Salveson filed for bankruptcy. Salveson and his attorney speculate that the aim of the bank’s hardball strategy is to take over the building and raise the subsidized rents there to whatever the market will bear, making the property far more valuable. Salveson said he offered to repay the bank if, eventually, the county rules against his application for an exemption. But, he said, the bank has turned the offer down.
Consumer advocates said the bank’s unwillingness to be flexible in the matter is unusual. “That’s not the way any reasonable bank would do business . . . if they want to keep the customer,” said Harry Snyder, co-director of Consumers Union in San Francisco. “It just seems absolutely arbitrary.”
The pioneering educational program caught in the middle of the dispute has been hailed for linking schools and students’ homes. The key to that communication is Julie Barber, the director of the tutoring program, who frequently visits the schools where the 35 children who are served by tutors are enrolled. The other important element of the program is the close relationships that develop between the students and their USC tutors.
“They are getting the attention that the teachers in the schools don’t have time to give,” she said.
USC School of Education Dean Guilbert C. Hentschke, who is a Project EEXCEL backer, said teachers “really see these kids come alive” as a result of that attention. “It’s something as simple as having books at home, which they can’t take home from school because gang members will take them away.”
