800-Student High School Proposed for CSUN Site

Los Angeles Unified School District officials are considering building a new high school on the Cal State Northridge campus, a move that would give the San Fernando Valley its first such facility in nearly three decades, officials said Thursday.

The proposed 800-student “teaching academy” would help to relieve severe crowding at nearby Granada Hills High School and Monroe High School in North Hills, said district officials, who are in a desperate citywide search to find suitable sites for 100 schools by 2008--when the student population is expected to swell to 776,150 from the current 700,000.

“This is such a golden opportunity,” said school board member Julie Korenstein, who represents the area and is leading the effort to build the school.

“It will give students at Monroe and Granada some breathing room,” she said. “The new school will be small, but it gives us 800 more seats than we had before.”

CSUN Interim President Louanne Kennedy said the new high school would equally meet university and district needs. “The value of this school is the partnership between the high school and the university,” Kennedy said. “What we have been doing separately we can now do together, and hopefully we will yield high-quality students and future teachers.”

Still, university and district officials acknowledge that the proposal must undergo a rigorous review by the Board of Education’s Facilities Committee and the full Board of Education as well as the Board of Trustees of the Cal State University system and the state Legislature.

If approved, district officials said construction could begin on an undeveloped parcel on the east side of the campus, along Zelzah Avenue north of Halsted Street in the spring of 2002 with completion set for the summer of 2003.

Officials have not yet attached a price tag to the project--which would be the first LAUSD high school on a college campus--but they expect to fund the proposal with district and state school bond revenues.

If the new school is approved, the LAUSD would deed to CSUN the former Prairie Street School, which is surrounded on three sides by the university campus, in exchange for the Zelzah Avenue parcel.

Proponents envision a “teaching academy” where public school teachers and university professors work together to improve student achievement. They also view the school as a proving ground for student teachers and an incubator where high school students considering education careers could flourish.

Students attending the high school would have access to the university library, language and science labs and athletic facilities. And students could enroll in college and high school courses simultaneously.

But exactly how the new school would be formed, and how the academic program would operate, has yet to be worked out, Korenstein said.

The teaching academy concept grew out of LAUSD plans to reopen Prairie Street Elementary as an experimental school operated jointly by the university and the district, Korenstein said. The school was shuttered in 1984 because of declining enrollment.

Representatives from both sides met several times in the fall of 1989 and in early 1990 to discuss a joint use of the eight-acre school site, Korenstein said. But budget problems and soaring enrollment thwarted the plans for the experimental school.

Since then, CSUN has leased part of the school site from the district for campus parking, university officials said.

Last fall, Korenstein and other district officials decided to make another run at establishing a teaching academy on campus, and set up a meeting with campus officials.

“We told them that this would be a joint venture that would encourage high school students to become teachers,” she said, “and CSUN could use it as a place to help their students train to become teachers.”

Korenstein said she expects to win support for the project from community residents, educators and political leaders alike because she considers it a win-win situation: “It’s like a perfect marriage.”