How to Bring Belmont Back to Life

There is a way out of the Belmont Learning Complex conundrum if the various players can pull back from their non-negotiable positions and think seriously about its future. Turn it into a charter school.

Perhaps the strangest turn in the Belmont saga, which goes back a decade, occurred when a new school board was elected with the help of a $2-million campaign sponsored by Mayor Richard Riordan. While clearly frustrated by the poor academic performance of schools in the Los Angeles Unfied School District, and strongly committed to improving the quality of a deteriorated public education system, the candidates had few specific ideas of how to turn things around. In stead, much of the campaign had to do with the pros and cons of building Belmont on a field of environmental hazards.

Sure enough, once the new board was elected and sworn in, one of its first acts was to halt construction of the school. This before the environmental studies the district had pledged were completed and certainly before plans for mitigation were finalized. Then it was back to doing business the old-fashioned way in Los Angeles: Belmont’s developers, contractors, architects and lawyers were all sued.

One group, however, was left out in the cold: the children who need the high school, the old Belmont, located just blocks away from the uncompleted new one, being considerably overcrowded. As it turned out, for all the outrage generated by the school board and others, their families still seem to want a school. They also seem to want the Belmont Learning Complex.

There are many experts who believe that the environmental problems associated with the Belmont site can be managed. But in the midst of dispute and frustration, the board acted hastily because it was determined to demonstrate the seriousness of its resolve. The board had no alternative plan, but acting for the sake of acting did not, it turns out, resolve the situation.

Turning Belmont into a charter school is an idea that might please all sides. It would give parents the choice of whether or not to send their children to the school.

There are only a handful of charter high schools in the LAUSD; one, in the Pacific Palisades, has particularly enjoyed success, with parents and teachers frequently reevaluating their mission. If Belmont were to become a charter high school, it could become the pride of multiethnic education. It would also get the school board off the hook.

Backers of the charter-school approach hope the necessary environmental studies will be completed and that the complex, with the cooperation of unions and absent the participation of the former contractors, will be finished. The school could then be chartered by the LAUSD if the county Board of Education approves. It would be eligible for public funding, since Proposition 39, approved last month by the voters, specifically provides that charter schools be considered as public schools for the purpose of selling bonds. In all other respects, the leadership and running of the charter school would be up to those in charge. It could be run as one school or divided into a number of academies. The charter itself would come up for renewal every three to five years.

There are other ideas of what to do about Belmont: finish it and then sell it, use it for the administration building of the LAUSD or just tear it down and let it be used as a park. None of them are really satisfying, and all of them are excruciatingly expensive. None of them address the serious implications of school-board President Genethia Hayes’ view that no safe schools can be built downtown. Without schools, there can be no downtown community. In the words of Antonia Hernandez, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, “Our children will be condemned to purgatory forever.” A charter school at the Belmont Learning Complex would give everyone a choice, including the city.