High School on Cal State Campus Being Studied

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 overcrowding at nearby Granada Hills High School and Monroe High School in North Hills, district officials said. They 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 facility.

“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.”

Cal State Northridge Interim President Louanne Kennedy said the 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 school board, as well as the Board of Trustees of the Cal State University system and the Legislature.