Parents Losing Patience With Project Delays at Belmont Site

The desperate need for a new high school has been lost amid concerns about the Belmont Learning Complex’s environmental hazards and astronomical price tag, a number of parents complained Saturday at a special meeting.

Many of the 105 parents who attended an open house near the site just west of downtown Los Angeles said they wanted the district to do whatever it could to finish the project. Some of their children are bused to the San Fernando Valley, they said, because there are too many students at Belmont High School.

“We’re overcrowded and they’re not paying attention to the fact that they promised us a school 20 years ago,” said Gloria Soto, head of a local parents group.

The daylong event was punctuated by an impassioned outburst from a group of local mothers, including Soto, lashing out at representatives of a state senator who has voiced heavy criticism of the project.

Furiously targeting three staff members of Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), the mothers complained that he is unduly taking the role of community spokesman in his attacks on the project, which has a price tag of $200 million.

“We can defend ourselves!” shouted Maria Rodriguez, whose children would attend the new school. “We take it as an insult that you think we can’t take care of ourselves.”

After a fierce shouting spat, they grabbed all of Hayden’s handouts and briefly scuffled with his staff. They said the fliers, listing the dangers of the various toxins at the site, were scare tactics meant to drum up local opposition to the project, the nation’s most expensive high school.

But Hayden’s staff members said they merely wanted to inform residents for their own safety, and ensure that they would have the option of sending their children elsewhere if they felt the school was unsafe.

“Those are just fact sheets about the chemicals,” said Peter Bibring. “Sen. Hayden has absolutely recognized that there is a dire need for a school here.”

Another staff member said the mothers are an organized group connected to Los Angeles school board member Victoria Castro, a supporter of the project. The group denied the charge, and Hayden’s staff left shortly after the argument.

The all-day open house was held at Belmont High, which is adjacent to the new school site in a predominantly Latino neighborhood. About 9,000 announcements had been distributed for the event.

Officials from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control staffed numerous desks to explain the dangers of having a school in an area that was once a working oil field. The state stepped into the fray in November to analyze whether building could safely proceed in light of the high quantities of methane gas and hydrogen sulfide found there. School district officials did not appear on Saturday.

On Tuesday, the school board voted unanimously to establish a commission of civic leaders to examine the site’s environmental problems. School officials also placed a gag order on all staff members ordering them not to discuss the project. That action was rescinded on Friday.

Many residents at the Saturday meeting seemed undaunted by the reports of toxic chemicals, and said they believed that it was the district’s duty to finish what it had started and clean up the mess. School overcrowding was their prime concern. One Belmont High student said she can’t even walk between classes without getting jostled in the halls.

“I’d definitely be willing to go to this school,” said Phan Phoung, 17. “I think the district would let us know if it was not safe.”

Most residents were more concerned with talking about the fate of the project than in merely voicing anger. And the talk was scientific. Craig Christmann, a state geologist, explained how methane samples were taken. He pointed to a map of vapor wells, soil borings and ground water monitoring wells.

“What’s the magic number with methane?” a resident asked. “What’s dangerous?”

“There’s no real magic number, but 5% is explosive,” Christmann said, referring to the proportion of methane in any one boring.

He then pointed to one boring, on what would be second base of the school baseball diamond, which came back with a sample that was 90% methane.

Christmann and other officials said it was likely that the hazards could be mitigated, but could not estimate the potential costs. Nor would they comment on whether they would recommend that construction continue.

Soto wondered why the project posed so many hazards when people have been living in the area for decades. Christmann responded: “People live with this stuff every day. But they have a choice. If you’re going to send your kids here, you don’t have a choice.”

Rodriguez said she didn’t understand how the community’s need for a high school twisted into such an expensive fiasco.

“Come on, this isn’t the Taj Mahal,” she said. “It’s a school, for God’s sake.”