District to Scrap Student Clinic

The Los Angeles Unified School District, home to tens of thousands of immigrant students, is preparing to dismantle a clinic and counseling center that serves newcomers in the city’s most crowded corridor.

Budget cuts and a space crunch are prompting district officials to rethink the future of the Immigrant Student Assessment and Placement Center at Plasencia Elementary near downtown.

About 4,000 students visit the district’s one-of-a-kind site in the Pico-Union area each year for free checkups, vaccinations, counseling and assistance with registration paperwork.

Until this week, district officials had planned to eliminate the center. But they backed off in the face of protests from neighborhood leaders, school principals and a legislator who said the center is too valuable to lose.

Now officials want to keep the facility’s medical staff intact but farm out its psychologist, social worker and a dozen interpreters to schools--arguing that they can reach more students by working in tandem with staff members at campuses.

But those who run the center say the new plan will undermine its primary mission: one-stop shopping for impoverished families who speak little English and need help navigating complex educational and health systems.

“We want to keep the services intact. The schools are already trained to send their kids here,” said center coordinator Rose Marie Durocher, who will meet with district officials today to make her case.

Officials Try to Balance Budget

The tug of war over the immigrant center is just one of several mini-dramas playing out as L.A. Unified strives to balance its budget. Administrators in the downtown headquarters and 11 subdistricts have been asked to cut spending by 20% to pay for a hefty teachers’ raise, new “coaches” for reading and math teachers, and growing enrollments, among other things.

The belt tightening affects numerous district operations, from school police patrols and special education to bilingual programs, contract services and attendance counselors. Many groups are lobbying Supt. Roy Romer to hold off on proposed cuts.

The immigrant center had been targeted for closure at the end of the month. Durocher and community leaders complained vociferously. Several principals and at least one legislator--Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles)--wrote Romer to express concern about losing the facility.

“The center has consistently provided a . . . comprehensive orientation to every student who walks through [its] doors,” Belmont High School Principal Ignacio Garcia wrote in one letter.

“LAUSD would be taking away badly needed services from students and negatively impacting the future of Los Angeles.”

Romer and other top district officials met with Durocher earlier this week and agreed to negotiate a compromise. But solving the dispute to everyone’s liking may be impossible.

The local superintendent in the Pico-Union area, Richard Alonzo, wants to keep the medical services intact but distribute the dozen translators and other staffers among the schools in the community. He believes that integrating the services at schools will allow the center to reach more students--a view shared by Romer.

“We are going to take care of these children with equal quality,” Romer said. “Any change we make will not lessen the services we give to the students.”

Romer pointed out that nearly all of the district’s 33,000 immigrant students are served by psychologists and other personnel at schools rather than at outside centers like the one in Pico-Union.

Durocher contends that her center is able to be far more responsive to immigrants’ needs than are scattered services at individual schools. Her center spends hours, for example, helping parents fill out paperwork and obtain medical care. At schools, she said, parents are left to fend for themselves.

District officials say there is another reason to break up the center: space. The facility occupies four bungalow classrooms in the rear of Plasencia Elementary. The crowded campus needs to serve more students who now ride buses.

The immigrant center opened 13 years ago as a pilot effort to serve a burgeoning immigrant population in the Pico-Union district, a well-known point of entry for immigrants and one of Los Angeles’ most densely packed communities. The facility has continued to operate even as the district’s overall immigrant enrollment has declined. Though most of its students come from the Pico-Union area, it also serves youngsters from Hollywood, Mid-Wilshire, Bell and elsewhere.

Many Students Have Dire Needs

The students arrive with overwhelming needs. Some are the victims of abuse or have fled violence in their homelands. Others, separated from their parents for years, are struggling with the emotional strains of reunions in a new country.

At the center, the students get vaccinated for tuberculosis, hepatitis and other diseases. Their sight and hearing are tested. They take reading tests in their home languages and English. Clerks help parents fill out registration papers.

Translators speak Spanish, Tagalog, Armenian, Russian and several other languages.

Maria Escobar was among the parents who brought their children to be seen Thursday. Escobar’s daughter, 14-year-old Janini, arrived from El Salvador just last month. Escobar has been in the United States for about six years but could only afford now to bring her daughter here.

Janini received a skin test for tuberculosis. She got six vaccinations--her arms were covered with Band-Aids. Her mother, meanwhile, got help registering the girl for classes at Virgil Middle School.

“I wouldn’t have been able to fill out the forms myself,” Escobar said in Spanish, holding a stack of paperwork in her hand. “I don’t know what I would do.”