If School’s In, Residents May Be Out

More than 50 people--some of whom have lived in their homes since before the bombing of Pearl Harbor--gathered Monday night to discuss ways to head off school district plans that might include acquiring their properties for a new elementary campus.

At issue are 44 homes and apartments and three businesses that the Los Angeles Unified School District has said it is considering acquiring through eminent domain for a campus needed to relieve overcrowding at Oxnard Street and Victory Boulevard elementary schools.

The neighborhood--4.8 acres between Oxnard Street, Calvert Street, Farmdale Avenue and Beck Avenue--is one of nine sites being considered for a new elementary school, said Bob Niccum, the district’s director of real estate and asset management. Other areas being considered include an abandoned police station, which the city owns and plans to use for a senior citizens center.

“The need in the area is great,” Niccum said Monday.

The Oxnard and Victory schools are year-round with estimated student enrollments of 1,200 and 1,700, respectively. Combined, the schools bus out about 150 students.

Area residents want a new school, they said, but are angry over what they called the district’s failure to give neighbors sufficient notice about public meetings.

The notices received, they added, were full of jargon and difficult to understand.

“We want to work with the district,” said Marilyn Carney, who is the third generation of her family to live in the neighborhood. “We’re not just NIMBYs [Not in My Backyard]. We want to work together.”

Niccum said the district has no preferred site for the elementary school and plans to hold several community meetings to solicit ideas from residents.

Residents applauded an announcement by Board of Education member-elect Caprice Young that a school board decision on the issue--originally expected today--has been postponed until July or August.

Niccum also said that eminent domain would be a last resort. “[Eminent domain] is never popular,” he said. “We want to look at all the available sites.”

Marge Hanson, 73, lives in the Bessemer Street house her parents purchased new in 1941 and it was the setting for Monday night’s meeting. “There is no place else that I could live in North Hollywood that I could afford,” said Hanson, a widow for nine years. She said she is resigned to being forced to move out of the area or out of state.

Original owners Walt Redfield, 86, and his wife, Lee, 79, remember the exact date in 1941 when they agreed to exchange painting and cleanup duties for a down payment on their $3,600 house on a corner lot. They raised a son and daughter there and say they have no intention of moving.

“I’m staying right here,” Lee Redfield said.

School district officials said they need to build about 100 new schools to deal with serious overcrowding and a class-size reduction program mandating a maximum student-teacher ratio of 20-1 for kindergarten through third grade.

In the San Fernando Valley, the district is scrambling to find property primarily in the area east of the San Diego Freeway and north of Oxnard Street to build at least six primary centers, three elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools.