New Tack on School Sites

Building new public schools has become one of California’s toughest challenges. Large parcels of land that are affordable, environmentally suitable and largely free of homes and businesses are scarce, particularly in places where the need is greatest. Crowded urban districts often face a no-win choice: kick people out of their homes or look to often-tainted industrial sites to get enough land.

The classroom crunch will undermine instructional reforms unless the state encourages local districts to build creatively on sites much smaller than the recommended 10 acres for elementary schools to 50 acres for large comprehensive high schools. The state should give as much regulatory relief and monetary help as possible to new ways of building schools.

In Minneapolis, a small school built on less than an acre shares the top floors of a downtown parking structure with a satellite campus of a Catholic college. The school, described in an article by Times staff writer Doug Smith, was constructed for a bargain $11.5 million with the backing of the mayor and an unusual civic partnership. Although tiny by California urban standards (600 students), the facility provides a model of how to maximize limited public resources.

In Orange County, the crowded Santa Ana Unified School District is completing a three-story intermediate school built over a parking structure in a shopping center at a cost of $24 million. The campus, which is expected to enroll 1,300 students, resulted from a now-defunct state pilot program that encouraged districts to site schools creatively and minimize the taking of residential and commercial property. The Los Angeles Unified School District has completed one such experimental school and is working on four more, including a high school at East Los Angeles Community College that will share existing academic and athletic facilities.

Multistory schools can go up at a fraction of the cost of spreading out. Campuses that share public facilities with community colleges, parks and libraries also conserve land and save money. Here’s the hitch: Nontraditional applications can take longer to process, and school officials fear they will lose out in the race for limited state school construction funds. Dwayne Brooks, director of facilities for the state Department of Education and a member of the State Allocation Board, has promised flexibility in approvals and funding. That flexibility should be guaranteed by state schools chief Delaine Eastin and the whole State Allocation Board. As an additional incentive, nontraditional space-saver applications should be first in line for state construction funds.

Los Angeles is already far behind in the race for state school bond funds, despite its need for up to 150 new schools, because it hasn’t identified sites. The funding is also contingent, as it should be, on approval by the state toxics agency--a step necessary to prevent a repeat of the economically disastrous Belmont Learning Complex, built on a contaminated abandoned oil field.

The district’s new leaders--Chief Operating Officer Howard Miller and interim Supt. Ramon Cortines--are committed to a fundamental shift in how schools are built, including siting new campuses in refurbished buildings such as the old Terminal Annex Post Office, should it become available and prove suitable.

For now, however, a shortage of classrooms continues to force children onto buses for long rides to less crowded campuses or to attend school on year-round schedules, often in large classes. If the state actively helps districts reconsider what a school should look like, then educators will eventually be able to spend less time trying to house students and more time educating them.