Board Votes to Complete Belmont

The Los Angeles Board of Education resurrected the Belmont Learning Complex on Tuesday, deciding to complete the half-built high school near downtown that it had abandoned two years ago over fears of toxic gases beneath the site.

The board voted 6 to 1 to begin negotiations with a coalition of Latino education advocates seeking to solve the environmental problems and open the campus within three years to about 4,600 students.

The new school, located atop an old oil field visible from the Harbor Freeway, will get about 2,500 downtown area students off buses and allow the existing nearby Belmont High to remain a separate high school.

“In delivering this project correctly and safely, we’ll heal some things in this community that need healing,” said Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer, architect of the revival.

The school board must still approve a contract within three months with the Alliance for a Better Community, the group chosen over one other bidder. The district will seek a cap on costs and more details about the complicated system of gas venting and polyethylene soil liners the plan proposes to ease health worries.

The campus already has cost $154 million and another $20 million in litigation and other fees. Finishing the job will run as much as $87 million from bond proceeds and revenues that the district receives from new construction throughout its territory, officials said. Privately, school board members acknowledge that the final additional tab could exceed $120 million, easily making Belmont the most expensive public high school in California history.

Finishing the Belmont campus has symbolic importance for a school district trying hard to rehabilitate its image from a bungling bureaucracy to one deserving public trust. Tuesday’s vote comes as L.A. Unified prepares to ask voters to approve in November more than $1 billion in bonds to build 85 additional schools in the sprawling district.

School board members cast their votes in an overflowing boardroom at Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters after a speechmaking marathon that featured a parade of Belmont supporters and a few opponents.

Belmont students, parents and elected officials, including Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn, urged the board to finish the project that has slogged through a decade of scandals, litigation and political upheaval.

“We need a high school in this area without delay,” Hahn told the board, adding that he has had concerns about environmental and legal issues surrounding the project. “We need to build a school that not only meets expectations but exceeds expectations. We’re going to be watched on this.”

The school board abandoned Belmont in January 2000 amid concerns about the extent of methane and hydrogen sulfide vapors in the ground of the 34-acre campus. It then sat idle, a prominent eyesore partly swathed in plastic, as other downtown landmarks, such as the Disney Concert Hall and Our Lady of the Angels Roman Catholic Cathedral, progressed.

Board President Caprice Young and board members Jose Huizar, Mike Lansing, Marlene Canter, David Tokofsky and Genethia Hayes voted to complete Belmont. Julie Korenstein voted no, citing concerns about whether the environmental mitigation can work.

Korenstein cautioned Romer not to “skimp on any environmental mitigation.”

“Please be very cautious, very careful,” she said. “I continue to have very, very serious reservations about the project.”

Young, who voted to stop the project two years ago, said she changed her mind because the district has assembled capable managers to oversee it and relied on noted outside experts for advice on financing, insurance and environmental problems.

“I feel confident that . . . we will be able to build a school that is safe and that will be safe in the future,” Young said. “That is a very big change from two years ago.”

School board members clearly were nervous about the decision, which caught them between their growing Latino constituency pushing for the school and continuing worries about funding and students’ health. They approved a flurry of last-minute amendments to cap the price in negotiations with Alliance for a Better Community and its partner, Matt Construction, to create independent oversight of the design, construction and operation of the school, and to require further analysis of the risk of litigation and hazards.

A few critics at the meeting questioned whether the gases would seep up and around the proposed soil liners. Others expressed concerns that the gas venting system could become clogged with soil and other debris. But organized opposition to the plan softened in the last year when such highly visible critics as state Sen. Tom Hayden and Assemblyman Scott Wildman left office.

The overwhelming sentiment in the board room was that building Belmont is necessary--and possible.

Parent Maria Rodriguez, who attended Belmont’s groundbreaking ceremony in 1997 and still has her hard hat and shovel from it, was elated. “It’s about time,” she said after the vote. Rodriguez had expected her daughter to attend the new Belmont, but the junior will have graduated by the time the campus opens. Even so, the mother is happy for the families who will benefit. “We’ve waited long enough,” she said. “I knew it was going to be completed, so I never got rid of [the hat and shovel].”

About 100 current Belmont parents and students marched a mile from the existing school to the meeting and milled in the halls, awaiting the vote. “I’m very happy because we accomplished what many of us have been working for for a long time,” said parent Mirna Velasquez. “This is a victory for our community.”

Belmont also is a success for Latino grass-roots organizations that saw the school as a test of the district’s respect.

Romer led the charge on Belmont, pulling together experts to review three bids that were submitted by private development teams, including Alliance for a Better Community. One was disqualified and the remaining one claimed it lost because of the winner’s political muscle. The alliance is headed by Ed Avila, former chief of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. It includes the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

School district officials insisted that the alliance was the most qualified bidder.

Huizar, the board’s vice president, lobbied members of the Los Angeles City Council, who unanimously approved a motion last week urging completion of the school. Huizar co-wrote the motion.

“Today is a victory for a community populated by mostly immigrants,” he said. “Many came here for their children’s education and if we are not providing that, we are not fulfilling our obligation.”