Getting Past Belmont

Belmont. The word in Los Angeles no longer is merely the name of a high school. It has come to symbolize all of the administrative incompetence that has disgraced the Los Angeles Unified School District. The district spent at least $150 million on the Belmont Learning Complex before The Times revealed nearly two years ago that top officials, including the superintendent at the time the property was bought, had ignored serious warnings: The site had been purchased without adequate environmental tests, and construction had been nearly completed without safeguards needed to protect students from toxic hydrogen sulfide gas and explosive methane gas.

After a panel of experts failed to agree conclusively on whether the high school could be made safe and finished at a rational cost and in a reasonable time, we saw no reason to continue pouring money into a project that potentially would take years and millions to complete, raise doubts and encourage environmental health lawsuits. We suggested that the district get to work building new schools, including campuses to relieve overcrowding at the existing Belmont High School.

Since then, efforts to nail down other sites have plodded along as 4,874 Belmont students squeeze onto the old campus on a staggered year-round schedule. An additional 1,500 students who live within the school’s boundaries are bused to distant campuses.

The controversy stemming from the district’s ineptitude in building the new campus helped to elect newcomers to the school board. A board majority, having made the hard choice to abandon the high school project because of legitimate concerns about safety, cost and liability, is understandably reluctant to reopen discussion of completing the Belmont Learning Complex. But the campus, west of downtown, can’t sit there and molder forever.

When the school board meets Tuesday, members should be open to finding ways to end the paralysis. Mayor Richard Riordan, who has inserted himself into this debate, wants something to be done one way or the other. And soon. Riordan, long a friend of public education, wants the project off the table so the LAUSD can concentrate on a huge construction backlog and overcrowded year-round schools that affect the quality of instruction.

The mayor also wants to create a political climate that will allow board members, including those he endorsed, to return to the volatile subject without being burned. Providing that kind of Teflon would require conclusive answers to big questions about health, safety and liability.

Most board members rightly refuse to sit through another round of experts quarreling ad nauseam. To get around opposition, Supt. Roy Romer, who wants to open the Belmont Learning Complex if it can be done, would have to come up with unimpeachable answers. In an effort to find those answers Romer will ask the board Tuesday to allow the private sector to submit proposals on how to make the school safe and keep it safe. He also wants interested parties to include the cost of providing liability insurance for the campus. He would invite potential buyers to submit figures on what it would cost the district if they were to clean up the campus environmentally and then lease it back to the LAUSD, or simply invite them to buy it outright for another purpose.

At this point of stalemate, Mayor Riordan is right to push for a decision. Either the campus can be made safe, at a reasonable cost, or the district should sell it.