Focus on Belmont Safety

The independent commission evaluating the Belmont Learning Center must find a singular yet elusive truth. Will the new high school nearing completion just west of Downtown be safe, now and in the long term? Or, will the campus built on an abandoned oil field contaminated with potentially explosive methane and other hazardous chemicals endanger students?

That is the answer sought by members of the Los Angeles Unified School Board. They will make the final decision on whether to proceed or pull the plug on the controversial $200-million project, the nation’s most expensive high school.

The frustration of board members led to the creation of the commission, and the appointments of: retired California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso; David Beckman, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council; former state senator Charles M. Calderon; union leader Janett Humphries; Maribel Marin, an L.A. city public works commissioner; Dr. Ira H. Monosson, former chief public health medical officer for Cal-OSHA; and Craig A. Perkins, director of environmental and public works management for Santa Monica. Former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, the executive director and general counsel, promises a verdict within the tight 60-day deadline.

As the seven commissioners proceed today with the election of a chair, they need to restore credibility to a debate characterized by misinformation, selfish politics, changing opinions, and hasty actions.

The chair also will have to keep the commission on task as they wade through enough documents to fill a school library and as they welcome public comment. The meetings have been scheduled on Mondays, Thursdays and even Saturdays to encourage greater public participation in a district that is too often prone to make decisions behind closed doors.

The commission takes on this task just as the school district’s dogged top investigator Don Mullinax is expected to release the first of two reports on Belmont. His first probe, due out next week, is expected to be very critical of former school officials who got the district into this mess, and perhaps some current executives involved in the poor planning that brought us to where we are today: an expensive near-complete school which may not be usable.

Whatever the fate of the Belmont Learning Center, the winners must be the students. Their health, safety and education must come first.