A LOOK AHEAD * As they endure chronic problems at an aging campus, one group has a strong view in the decision faced by the L.A. district. . . . ‘We Need It,’ Students Say of Belmont School

While politicians and experts debate the fate of the methane-tainted Belmont Learning Complex, the students most affected by those adult decisions have this to say:

Build it, and we will come.

About two dozen teenagers in a student leadership class at the current Belmont High, located on West 2nd Street, say they are tired of living with overcrowded classrooms and overflowing toilets in a building that opened when Calvin Coolidge was president.

And given the chance to speak their minds, students ranging from freshmen to seniors were unanimous in demanding that the new complex be completed and opened--as long as it is guaranteed environmentally safe.

“They should finish it. We need it,” Marc Barrios, 18, Belmont’s student body president, said last week. “If they don’t build it, the land will still be there, and it will still need to be cleaned up.

“If they said they cleaned it up, I would go.”

That’s not to say all the students trust the Los Angeles school board to make things right at the controversial project.

Like some of her classmates, junior Lan Tran, 17, said she would only attend classes there if some outside agency certifies that the new Belmont is safe.

“I want a report that says it’s cleaned up,” Tran said. “I don’t trust what’s going on now.”

As it happens, her wish has come true. School officials have agreed to open the new Belmont only after review by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.

The new structure rising west of downtown has been widely denounced as a bureaucratic fiasco. In their haste to open a badly needed inner-city school, Los Angeles Unified officials allowed construction of the complex to begin without completing a thorough environmental assessment of the site, a former oil field laden with methane and other oil byproducts. Many say that children should not attend such a toxic school.

But to Belmont students, who can see the complex from a rooftop lunch area, the half-completed building represents an unfulfilled promise by the school board to give them a new facility to replace their broken-down school.

“In a way, they really owe it to the whole community,” Barrios said. “This community gives a lot to the city of Los Angeles. If students have a better education, they will have better lives, and they will be able to contribute even more to the city, economically and in other ways. It’s give and receive.”

Gladys Acabal, a 17-year-old senior, said it would be a waste for the school district to walk away from the new building now that it has already spent more than $125 million.

“With that money they already put into [the new Belmont], they could have rebuilt this school,” she said.

There is plenty to rebuild at the 76-year-old school, where the majority of students are Latino but a significant portion are Asian. Students said the problems afflicting the current Belmont building range from mere annoyances to apparent health hazards.

“Here at Belmont, it’s not that clean,” said sophomore Jennifer Herrera, 15, referring to the bathrooms, halls and stairways. “It’s just dirty, and the classrooms are crowded.”

The boys in the class were the most critical of their restrooms. On a tour of the second-floor boys’ lavatory--one of only four in the 5,000-student school--they pointed out that three of the four toilets were out of order.

Students had used them anyway, and one afternoon last week they were filled with human waste. None of the stalls had doors. There was no toilet paper, no soap, no hot water and no paper towels.

“That’s how it always is,” said Douglas Quijada, 18. “We have to use the bathroom, so we do. We’re tough guys.”

Tran and others said the air conditioning does not cool the building, but it is good at circulating the smell of hot tar from the school’s roof, which is being replaced as part of a six-week repair project.

Students complained that tar fumes fill the building, giving them headaches and nauseating them.

Mercy Delacruz, 15, said the tar smell “makes it very hard to study.”

On Belmont’s fourth floor, nearest the roof, the acrid stench was overwhelming. But students in one science class had to endure it. They said they did not understand why the repair work could not be done after school or on weekends--and worried about the effects of breathing the fine, black soot that they say floats through the air.

Concerns about the tar smell and dust prompted a teacher to complain, and Principal Ignacio Garcia looked into the matter.

On Tuesday, he issued a memo saying that the fumes might cause short-term irritation but that dust particles were detected below Cal/OSHA’s permissible limits. Still, he strongly encouraged everyone to keep the windows closed.

Although the teenagers were upset about Belmont’s physical woes, they were just as ready to praise their teachers and the school’s strong sense of community.

“This is like a family school,” said student body President Barrios. “Whole families have gone here. They like it, but they see we really need another place.”

Standing on the rooftop, Barrios looked toward the new, partially constructed complex a few blocks away. As a senior, he will not attend the new Belmont complex.

But he hopes other students will have the opportunity.

“We have good teachers here, good students,” he said. “We just need a new school.”