Long-Shuttered Valley School Given New Life

The bell rang at Garden Grove Avenue Elementary School on Wednesday morning for the first time in 13 years, summoning swarms of students to classrooms reborn with peach-colored paint and bundles of new supplies.

The campus, like a number of other San Fernando Valley public schools, locked its doors after thousands of parents abandoned the Los Angeles Unified School District in the wake of mandatory school busing.

On Wednesday, however, prompted by swelling enrollment and the state’s class-reduction initiative, the district reopened the long-shuttered campus--the first of many across Los Angeles County expected to reopen over the next year for the same reasons.

The Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District, for example, will open two elementary schools Monday to accommodate its own swelling student population. And the El Segundo Unified School District is planning to reopen a junior high school that had served as the practice field of the Los Angeles Raiders, to free up space for more elementary school students.

The restoration of old schools comes as a result of demographic trends that have pushed enrollments to the bursting point.

In the 1970s and early ‘80s, a drop in the birthrate after the baby boom forced officials to close schools and consolidate students. Enrollment was also dealt a severe blow by white flight, as parents in the Valley and elsewhere fled urban areas in response to busing and growing racial tension.

But during the last decade, the emptying out has gradually reversed, as the children of baby boomers produced their own kids and immigrants began to arrive in Southern California in record numbers.

“First, [you had] white flight and the baby bust driving down enrollment, then the baby boom ‘echo’ and immigration driving up enrollment,” said Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography at USC. “Then, class-size reduction jiggled a very full glass.”

Enrollment in the Norwalk-La Mirada District, projected at 21,746 this year, is expected to continue to rise through 2000.

El Segundo’s enrollment had declined to 1,803 in 1984, but has now surpassed 2,700--the result of young families moving into the area.

“It’s been an exciting period for us as we once again are seeing the schools grow,” Interim Supt. William Watkins said. “We see a continued growth as these younger classes move through the grades.”

Los Angeles school officials, meanwhile, are tackling the enrollment dilemma on a far larger scale.

The district’s enrollment now stands at about 668,000 but is projected to grow by 50,000 children by 2001. And the Valley, which represents about 30% of the district’s students, accounted for 42% of its additional 18,570 students last year.

In the early 1980s, the district closed 12 elementary schools and one middle school, virtually all of them in the Valley. Now, in addition to Garden Grove elementary, the district is considering opening three other shuttered campuses--two in the San Fernando Valley and one in Westchester.

Officials are weighing whether the communities around those three schools suffer from the same overcrowding that plagued the neighborhoods near the Garden Grove school.

The area’s young, middle-class families in starter homes, as well as its apartment complexes teeming with recent immigrants, all feed the local elementary schools. Four within a mile or two of Garden Grove were filled to capacity last year, and two even had to bus students elsewhere.

Reopening Garden Grove, an empty shell that had become a dilapidated eyesore, seemed like the perfect solution, LAUSD officials said.

“That one was a slam-dunk,” said Bruce Takeguma, assistant director of the district’s school management services.

By all accounts, the school district worked wonders at Garden Grove with $1.8 million in state funds from the class-size initiative and eight months of renovations.

A neatly trimmed front lawn now stands where weeds and overgrown ivy had taken control. A crisp new asphalt playground--with new basketball hoops and tetherball courts--replaced a hardtop cracked in a thousand places. Air conditioners now cool classrooms that once served as havens for graffiti vandals and homeless squatters.

The school also features several high-tech additions, including televisions, VCRs and cable hookup and motion-sensor burglar alarms in every classroom, a new intercom system and underground conduit for computers.

“Now we can focus on student achievement,” said Principal Peggy Scaramastra, who had been assistant principal at nearby Bassett Street Elementary School in Van Nuys.

Wednesday got off to a relatively smooth start, despite typical first-day kinks--students lining up at the wrong place on the playground before classes began, and frantic parents trying to register their children at the last minute.

Students, teachers and parents alike were excited about the start of school. Some parents said they were thrilled to have their children attending school within blocks of home. Others welcomed the air-conditioned classrooms. Still others marveled at the orderly campus, where a new, brightly colored running track had even been painted on the asphalt playground.

“We didn’t want to move our children, but they said it’s a new school with air conditioning and better things than the other school,” said Jaime Aguirre, whose 9-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter moved from Anatola Elementary about a mile away.

“It looks very clean and seems like everybody is very friendly,” Aguirre continued. “It’s brand-new.’

Times staff writer Henry Chu contributed to this story.

* SCHOOL FUNDING: Legislature studies change in how to pay for schools. A3