County Shelves Plan for Early Learning Center at the Mall

It was designed to grab attention: a new kind of school for the youngest of children in the biggest of malls.

Los Angeles County education officials hinted at an opening this spring. News releases were drafted. Designs for the school were drawn. In its official materials, the U.S. Department of Education featured the project as a prototype for teaching early literacy to children younger than 5. The Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance agreed to donate 5,500 square feet of prime retail space. Congress earmarked $440,000 to launch it.

Despite all this, the Early Advantage Center hasn’t opened. Staffers at the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which was to run the mall-based center, say it probably will never open. After five years of planning, the county quietly abandoned the center earlier this year, with little notice to the idea’s backers.

As word has leaked out, the reversal has puzzled those supporters. Adding to the confusion is the wide variety of explanations given by the county’s education leaders for dropping the idea. Its acting superintendent said the county Office of Education--a little-known but powerful bureaucracy with a $700-million budget--now prefers to offer the services at existing nutrition centers for a wider geographic spread. Other officials worried that the mall-based school might not survive financially beyond one year.

Some of the center’s backers allege that the cautious education bureaucracy was scared off by the possibility of political battles set off by jealousy from other parts of the county.

“The whole thing has sort of fizzled,” said Rose Kauffman, a former county assistant superintendent who originated the concept. “No one can give you a good reason why it won’t happen.”

Kauffman, an educator for 30 years, said the idea of a school-in-a-mall first occurred to her in a dream five years ago. Long a close reader of scientific studies on brain development in young children, Kauffman had been thinking about ways to communicate that research to parents. After conversations with educators and scientists around the state, she worked with the Bakersfield City School District in putting together a literacy center for young children at a mall there three years ago.

For Los Angeles, Kauffman envisioned an even grander learning center. With the backing of then-county Office of Education Supt. Donald Ingwerson, she proposed a facility that, like the mall, would be open evenings and weekends. It would have no steady enrollment, but instead would allow parents to walk in with children at any time. Instead of permanent classes, it would offer a variety of learning stations, with activities repeated throughout the day. Parents and child-care providers also could sign up for special classes in how to stimulate the brains of the very young.

“The concept had a lot of support,” said Madeline Hall, the county grants development coordinator, who sought funding. “In terms of the county office trying to help the most districts and kids, we can do this by focusing on school readiness. And a mall is a place where people from a variety of different places assemble.”

The county’s Early Advantage program formed partnerships with local hospitals to offer classes at the center and develop pamphlets and videos with tips on boosting young children’s capacity to learn.

“It was a very, very challenging concept but also a good one,” said Dr. Lloyd Brown, associate director of the pediatric residency training program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, one of Early Advantage’s partners.

County officials also began to look for a mall that would host the center. By last year, Torrance Co., owner of Del Amo Fashion Center, had agreed in writing to donate retail space worth $1.2 million a year next to Macy’s department store, county officials say. The county facilities staff performed a study. Architects made drawings of a facility. It was to be decorated in “Sesame Street” style--with colorful floor stencils of numbers and letters.

Last spring, four California members of Congress--Reps. Jane Harman (D-Venice), Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), David Dreier (R-San Dimas) and Gary G. Miller (R-Diamond Bar)--began aggressively lobbying congressional appropriators to specifically fund a learning center in the mall.

With the commitment from the mall in place, the county launched an aggressive public relations effort to promote the new learning center. Sophia Waugh, president of the county Office of Education board, talked up the idea to reporters. The concept received a mention at a White House meeting on child development last year. A team from the U.S. Department of Education was invited to inspect the program; a subsequent article in a fall issue of the department’s Community Update referred to the new center as a fait accompli.

In that article, the county described the Del Amo site as “a prototype for major malls throughout Los Angeles County.”

“What this office--its board and superintendent--realized,” acting county Supt. Marilyn Gogolin, who replaced Ingwerson last summer, told the publication, “is that if we really want to change student achievement, if we really want to stop playing catch-up or stop trying to change the life of a child after the child’s already in school, we have to do something different.”

In December, the county learned that congressional appropriators had come up with $440,000 for the Early Advantage Center--enough to open it. Harman heralded the new facility in a news release announcing the funding.

But almost immediately after the funds came through, Gogolin and other county officials began to reconsider.

County officials say that during two planning meetings in January, Gogolin and senior staffers decided to back away from the idea of a mall-based center. Instead, they chose to put the federal money into an outreach program at Women, Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition centers around the county. Two weeks ago, the county submitted an application to the federal government asking to use the money in five WIC centers. That application makes no mention of the mall idea and gives no explanation of why it was abandoned.

Backers Shifted Positions Abruptly

That abrupt shift came without public notice from the same county officials who had been touting the mall project all last year. In mid-March, a county spokesman told The Times that it was still being planned.

Late last month, members of the county Board of Education were still talking up the new center. “It’s still very viable,” Angie Papadakis said. “The board is still gung-ho.”

Mall officials received no clear message of the change of heart until March. “We thought it was a wonderful idea,” said Brandace Bruning, vice president for the mall’s owner. “But now we understand that the program has changed and is no longer appropriate for a major shopping venue.”

In fact, county records show--and county officials concede privately--that the mall center is dead. In the last few weeks, they have offered a variety of reasons, some contradictory. At first, county Director of Communications Frank Kwan said the mall concept had never been the focus of the county’s efforts; the federal money could be put to better use by spreading out services among five locations across the county. “We wanted to reach families, particularly low-income families, where we could,” he said.

In a subsequent interview, Gogolin and other county officials said a lack of funding was at the center of their decision. The federal funds, while generous, weren’t enough to sustain the mall center, they said. The nutrition sites are federally funded and managed by local agencies and nonprofits. Instead of the county providing its own staff at a mall, the WIC staff could be given additional training in teaching literacy.

As such, Gogolin argues, the WICs are more stable locations than donated retail space.

“The credibility issue would be if we opened a mall center and 12 months from now we closed it,” she said.

Supporters of the mall center say that explanation represents, at best, excessive caution. Early Advantage, they argue, had unusual strengths for a start-up--congressional backing, free and high-profile space--which would have made it attractive to foundations and corporate donors.

County officials had talked to Toyota with an idea of making it the center’s title sponsor.

“But they won’t fund the opening or the build-out; corporations and foundations prefer to fund existing programs,” said Kauffman, the plan’s originator. “You need to get the doors open first before Toyota comes in.... I think politics played a part.”

Change in Leadership Cited as One Reason

Kauffman points to the departure of the longtime superintendent, Ingwerson, as one possible reason for the change. Kauffman and county Board of Education member Rudell Freer say county officials feared opening a high-profile school in just one place instead of the multiple locations that might please more Congress members or county supervisors.

Gogolin is a finalist in the Board of Supervisors’ search for a permanent superintendent. She dismisses speculation that she killed the idea for any political motive. “I don’t need this job,” she said.

Ingwerson, who left office in August, said his concerns about the center’s viability would have eased with the award in December of the congressional money, but he added: “If the WIC concept serves kids better, more power to them.”

Kauffman, meanwhile, hopes the mall concept can be revived.

“The multiple centers are simply not as easy or as visible as a mall,” she said. “A mall is a destination for people. The mall idea still deserves a chance.”