Primary Center Will Open This Month

After a month’s delay, the Valerio Primary Center will open Oct. 27 with 180 students and assurances from state environmental officials that no dangerous levels of arsenic exist at the 2.9-acre campus.

The school “does not appear to pose a threat to human health and the environment,” according to officials from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, which oversaw the Los Angeles Unified School District’s environmental cleanup after soil tests last summer turned up above-average levels of the carcinogen.

As a precautionary measure, state officials ordered two feet of soil to be replaced with new, scientifically tested soil.

Although additional tests disclosed only safe levels of arsenic, a naturally occurring metal common in Southern California, the original discovery prompted construction delays and, in September, the temporary relocation of students to the adjacent Valerio Street Elementary School.

Los Angeles Board of Education member Julie Korenstein praised the opening of the brightly colored mini-campus for kindergartners and first-graders.

Next year, the school will expand to include second grade and switch to a year-round calendar to accommodate an additional 180 students.

Valerio is the district’s second primary center in the San Fernando Valley. In September, Monroe Primary Center in Panorama City opened on schedule with 220 kindergartners and first-graders.