SPECIAL REPORT * With L.A. Unified growing and new sites often ‘nasty’ or nonexistent . . . : Where Will Students Go?

Driving along a dirt alley in Panorama City, Los Angeles Unified School District officials laughed at the absurdity of a site suggested by consultants for a new high school.

To their left, they surveyed old radiators stacked in piles, rows of 55-gallon drums typically used to store and ship chemicals, and red hazardous waste warnings posted by the area’s industrial businesses.

To their right, they stared dumbfounded at the Metrolink tracks running alongside the proposed school site and at Bob’s Classy Lady, an all-nude club just beyond the tracks.

The 25-acre industrial complex--home to a chrome-plating company, an auto shop, a heating and air-conditioning repair service, a lumberyard, a furniture manufacturer and an aerospace manufacturer--is across from the former General Motors plant on Van Nuys Boulevard, raising additional environmental questions.

And at $62 million--a conservative estimate since Los Angeles Unified would have to relocate 41 businesses, including a Smart & Final grocery store and others with hefty, hard-to-move machinery--the cost of acquiring and clearing the site is millions more than the 11 others proposed by the same consultants and community representatives.

“This is a nasty, nasty site,” said Bob Niccum, the district’s director of real estate and asset management. “It sends shivers down my spine. Not much appealing about it at all.”

Nasty sites, and no sites. Sometimes that is all Niccum and his site selection staff of eight seem to encounter as they comb the 707 square miles that make up the nation’s second-largest school district.

In a desperate search to build 100 schools by 2008, when the student population is projected to swell to 776,150, challenges abound for district officials charged with identifying sites in some of the city’s densest neighborhoods, from downtown to Hollywood to the northeast San Fernando Valley to southeast Los Angeles.

“There certainly isn’t a lot of land available,” said Niccum, who is experiencing the busiest building spree in his 20 years with the district, aided by two recent bond measures authorizing $3 billion in new school construction funds.

More than half of the new schools needed are for the district’s youngest students, a result of the district’s class size reduction that mandates a maximum student-teacher ratio of 20 to 1 for kindergarten through third grade.

Although student population growth has been mostly in the lower grades, officials said it is quickly spreading into the middle and high schools.

Already, 10 district high schools have enrollments topping 4,000 students, said Gordon Wohlers, an assistant superintendent in charge of policy research, development and school management services.

Nearly a third of the high schools are on multitrack, year-round schedules, he added. If all high schools go to that system by 2006, and no schools are built, “we will not have enough room for students.”

The number of schools needed could rise to 150 if the district, as research recommends, builds smaller campuses.

“We need to move as quickly as possible,” Wohlers said. “Or else we will run out of space.”

As the need for schools grows, so do the worries and criticism about the way school sites are identified. The public and school officials cite the uncompleted Belmont Learning Complex downtown, a district jewel until school officials acknowledged that the nation’s costliest high school was built on an oil field and may be abandoned for health and safety reasons.

Critics also say that the district has bullied communities by ignoring residents and aggressively pursuing land while paying $39,433 to Orange County-based consultants who have suggested some impractical, expensive and questionable sites, such as the Panorama City industrial complex.

Even Niccum, a self-described optimist, gave consultants from Paragon Partners Ltd. a grade of C for their overall work last year. Then he quickly added: “The more ideas we have, the better.”

District officials provided Paragon, which they hired because it was the lowest bidder, with a list of about 20 schools needed throughout Los Angeles and asked the consultants to find three sites for each school. The district is reviewing the suggestions.

Paragon President Neilia LaValle said consultants did the best they could under the district’s “extremely aggressive and ridiculous” schedule of identifying 60 sites in 45 days, with the caveat that school officials would like to take as few homes as possible.

Taking What They Can Get

As for sites that consultants suggested, LaValle said “a horrible site may have been less horrible than other sites. If you take an industrial area, you’re going to have environmental problems. . . . The public was well served.”

Los Angeles Board of Education member David Tokofsky scoffed at the group’s ability to find sites, given its unfamiliarity with the neighborhoods. “Judging by what they’ve done,” he said, “they do a virtual drive-by on the computer and come up with some sites.

“Nothing indicates we could build 100 schools based on our past,” said Tokofsky, who was appointed last month to head the board’s facilities committee. “But there’s no better time to change than now.”

And change is happening. At the recommendation of New Schools Better Neighborhoods, a nonprofit group of business, cultural and community leaders, Los Angeles school officials are trying to hire better consultants and include more residents and businesses in the site selection process.

The state recently began an audit of how the district selects sites, in response to pressure from local legislators after two incidents in which officials failed to adequately inform the public that they wanted to build schools on particular properties--a violation of district policy.

Arleta residents opposed building a high school at a former Gemco department store after learning belatedly that it was the district’s preferred site even though it was being developed into a supermarket.

Community outcry forced the district to consider other locations for relieving overcrowding at Monroe, San Fernando and Van Nuys high schools.

School officials said they did not follow the usual process with the Gemco property and a Panorama City location--the former Van Nuys Drive-In, being studied for a middle school--because they feared losing the sites to competitors.

“We jumped ahead because we didn’t want the site to get away from us,” said Niccum, whose staff is reviewing alternative locations suggested by Arleta residents before making a recommendation to the board.

School officials still rely on the drive-by method of finding sites, ideally requiring minimum cost and relocation of homes or businesses. Because of the land shortage, district officials said they are considering ways to use less space, such as building more multistory schools.

Niccum often leads the semimonthly hunt, as he and his staff cruise Los Angeles in his blue van, sometimes surveying sites suggested by consultants or the community, other times randomly searching for vacant parcels, run-down apartments or abandoned buildings.

To the irritation of communities, school officials have also studied areas that are centrally located for easing overcrowding but would require razing homes in such places as Hollywood and North Hollywood.

“These are not cookie-cutter houses,” George Richter, president of the Beverly-Kingsley Neighborhood Group, said of the district’s original interest in taking 19 Craftsman bungalows dating back to 1910 for a school near Cahuenga Elementary School in Hollywood.

About 1,200 students attend Cahuenga, and an additional 1,400 students catch buses outside the school each day to ride to other facilities from five to 60 minutes away.

With the help of New Schools Better Neighborhoods, Hollywood residents will begin a series of meetings Thursday with about 100 district officials, teachers, business owners, residents, architects and political leaders to devise a plan for building schools, including suggested locations. After a consensus is reached, within the next year or so, community representatives will make a recommendation to the Board of Education.

Richter and school board member Caprice Young, who represents the Hollywood area, said they hope the process becomes a model for the way school sites are selected.

Traditionally, the district has “picked sites without having much knowledge of the neighborhoods,” Young said. “We want to change that.”

Drastic Measures

In North Hollywood, the district has said it would consider acquiring 44 homes and apartments and three businesses through eminent domain for a school to relieve overcrowding at Oxnard Street and Victory Boulevard elementary schools. Both are year-round with estimated student enrollments of 1,200 and 1,700, respectively.

Marilyn Carney said she and other North Hollywood residents--some of whom have lived in their tree-lined neighborhood since before the bombing of Pearl Harbor--are busily compiling a list of alternative sites for the district. They’re baffled about why the district is looking at their nice, clean neighborhood instead of nearby gang-infested streets with run-down buildings.

Emphasizing that “taking homes is always a last resort,” Niccum said the North Hollywood neighborhood is one of nine sites being considered for an elementary school.

“We are invaluable and free resources, and the district doesn’t use us,” Carney said. “We know more about the area than some guy from Orange County who drives around, takes pictures and then recommends a site.”

Niccum, a Buena Park resident, uses a digital camera when he searches for sites. On a recent afternoon, he took 40 pictures of potential properties as he and two staff members cruised the northeast Valley, evaluating alternatives to the Gemco property.

By day’s end, the Gemco site looked particularly appealing. The 12.6-acre lot of weeds, dirt and litter was for sale for $7.5 million. The retailer decided to open a store nearby at a former Lucky market.

Niccum’s green eyes gleamed.

“This is great,” he mumbled. “This is great.”

One of his staff members sighed with relief.

Most of the suggested sites had flopped. From the consultants came another expensive industrial area with propane tanks and a topless bar nearby.

Community members, although well-meaning, do not always understand the components involved in acquiring property, such as cost, location for best serving students and the feasibility of relocation, school district officials said.

For alternatives to the Gemco site, they suggested a narrow strip along the Golden State Freeway, a portion of Whiteman Airport, or a parcel that would require razing a church and a Buddhist temple.

“That will bring us a lot more enemies,” said Niccum, noting that the district has acquired churches.

Niccum knows he’s unpopular. “We have to take our lickins’ now,” he said. “Our job doesn’t have a lot of public validation, but eventually the community will benefit with new schools.”