It’s Back to Public for Schools

As rumors wafted through the Hughes Adult Learning Center that its Woodland Hills campus might be turned over to a charter school, the panicked students looked a block away and started asking questions.

Why was the once public Collins Street Elementary School, which would neatly accommodate Hughes’ English, computer and parenting classes, now being leased to Kadima Hebrew Academy, a private school? Shouldn’t public education come first?

At a second Woodland Hills private school renting from Los Angeles Unified School District, parents and administrators had their own questions. After all the money Castlemont School had put into a new sports field and other improvements at the former Collier Street Elementary, why was the district moving to reclaim a campus it admitted it did not need?

In a compromise that seems to appease the public and private schools involved, the Los Angeles district’s Board of Education is leaning toward extending at least two of its private tenants’ leases and reopening seven other campuses that have not been used for public school children since the 1980s.

The school board is scheduled Tuesday to seek proposals for the future uses of all nine campuses in the western San Fernando Valley. Because the area’s schools are among the school district’s least crowded, seven of the campuses have been leased to private schools--among them, a Christian school, two Jewish academies, a French school and an arts academy that employs study methods developed by the founder of Scientology. L.A. Unified has used the other two campuses for administrative offices and programs for adults, at the Hughes center.

The school district alerted the private schools more than a year ago that their leases would not be renewed. Some have found new homes; others are still looking. Castlemont and Kadima will probably be allowed to bid on new leases for their campuses.

Because LAUSD does not project needing more elementary schools in the West Valley, the district has considered selling at least some campuses now used by private schools. Bob Collins, superintendent of the mini-district overseeing two of those sites, cautioned against that.

“To sell the properties would certainly ensure that we would not have those seats available when and if we needed them in the future,” he said.

Plans are vague, though, for the seven campuses that LAUSD is reclaiming. One could become a charter school and teacher academy, both devoted to special education. (Charter schools receive public funds but operate independently from their public school district.)

Three more campuses are being considered for either traditional or charter high schools to ease overcrowding and prevent Woodland Hills’ highly regarded El Camino Real High School from becoming a year-round campus. LAUSD staff has not developed plans for the three remaining campuses.

Facing the possibility that the Hughes Adult Learning Center will have to leave its campus to make way for a high school, Hughes students and teachers worry that their new site might be less convenient.

Unlike most of the district’s adult schools, the center offers a full schedule of day classes, enrolling about 4,000 adults each year. Hughes’ unusual schedule makes it difficult for the school to move to a campus used by children, and several students said they cannot switch to a night school.

“I’m not allowed to go at night,” said Ricardo Soto, a Mexican immigrant who cleans office buildings at night and joins his wife, Marta, for English classes at Hughes during the day. While they study, their 4-year-old son plays at the school’s free child-care center.

“To be together in this school has given us the opportunity to study as a family, together,” Soto told school board members at a meeting last Tuesday. Board member Marlene Canter, who represents the West Valley and proposed the motion affecting the nine campuses, has promised the Hughes adult center will not close or need to alter its schedule. But it will almost certainly have to move--sometime.

“It’s a great program,” Canter said. “There was never any intent to not have a home for them.”

Canter also praised the two private schools that will be allowed to bid on new leases. “There are two well-functioning schools, albeit private, right now that are providing education for kids [and] have been doing it well for a long time.”

Castlemont School’s director, Martin Duberstein, said the school would prefer to buy its campus of the last 10 years but will settle for another lease. Kadima Hebrew Academy is expected to pursue a new lease.