Leave Those Bad Decisions Behind, and Build Belmont

Last week, Gov. Gray Davis, local officials and three developers paved the way for the Los Angeles Board of Education to solve its biggest political problem, the Belmont Learning Complex fiasco.

The long-stalled project, just west of the Harbor Freeway, stands like a shameful sentry between downtown’s wealth and the poverty of the Temple-Beaudry district’s crowded immigrant neighborhoods. The school board should act on these new developments and finish the new Belmont High School.

Two years ago, a newly elected majority of reformers on the board voted against completing the high school complex. In doing so, none of them seemed to have considered how the surrounding community--heavily Latino and politically restive--would react.

They got a sampling almost immediately when area parents and students began to protest.

The district was left with a multimillion-dollar disaster, and the students without a desperately needed school.

Last week, several local elected officials joined forces with Davis (who is gearing up for a reelection campaign, possibly against former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan) to revive the Belmont project.

Davis signed a bill by the Belmont area’s Democratic Assembly member, Jackie Goldberg, ordering the school district to complete state-approved environmental reviews and mitigation studies before it can sell the property where the unfinished high school sits. All must be completed by Jan. 1, 2003.

Like most supporters of the new Belmont project, Goldberg is convinced that unbiased science would show that the unfinished high school can be made safe for students and only the lack of political will keeps the new campus from completion.

Goldberg was joined at a press conference to announce the new state requirements not just by parents of area students but by virtually every elected official who represents them--a county supervisor, two city councilmen and, most notably, the school board member elected earlier this year to represent the area, Jose Huizar.

Even more significant, last Wednesday the school board received three proposals from private developers willing to complete the project after mitigating any environmental problems.

One proposal envisions running the new Belmont as an independent charter school. The other two would lease the site back to the district.

The Belmont supporters also were buoyed by the results of a public opinion survey that shows overwhelming neighborhood support for opening the new school.

Commissioned by the Los Angeles County Alliance for Student Achievement in partnership with the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute in Claremont, the study questioned 333 parents of school-age children, more than 70% of whom said they would be willing to send their children to the school.

Two years ago, the new board members were led astray by mentors such as Riordan, who raised most of the money to get them elected, and Howard Miller, a former school board member (recalled in 1979) they briefly hired as the district’s chief business executive. Riordan, Miller and their political cronies convinced them that the new Belmont’s $170-million cost and environmental issues (the site sits over a former oil field) made it a political liability.

The school board would be well-advised now to take whichever proposal offers it the political cover to rectify its earlier misguided decision.

For all the problems the working poor of Temple-Beaudry face, there is no more powerful symbol of how little they and their children count in the eyes of some local officials than the abandoned new Belmont site.

The current Belmont High School is a quarter-mile away with 5,000 students jammed onto a 78-year-old campus designed for 2,500. It has been overcrowded for 20 years, but local politics has blocked the solution.

As school board member Huizar says, “It’s time to get science in, and get politics out.”

Fine sentiments. He can only hope his colleagues on the school board have learned enough about local politics in the last couple of years to follow their own good instincts and good intentions rather than bum advice from Riordan, Miller and their ilk.