School Site Axed Where Need Is Dire

While savoring their success in reviving the Belmont Learning Complex, Los Angeles school officials have scuttled plans for another desperately needed high school in East Los Angeles.

Community opposition, flawed planning and public relations blunders doomed the proposal to build a 2,000-student campus next to Belvedere Park, the largest patch of open land in East Los Angeles, according to those involved.

The Los Angeles Unified School District this month pulled the plug on the project--seven miles from Belmont--at the urging of top county officials, who said the district failed to adequately address the anticipated impact on traffic, parking and crime.

But district officials pointed fingers back at the county, saying the project died for lack of strong support from community leaders, including Supervisor Gloria Molina, who represents the area.

The loss of the park-side land means the district is again searching for sites to relieve severe crowding at Garfield and Roosevelt high schools, which together serve more than 9,000 students. The district invested $1.9 million in the proposal.

Finding another location in East Los Angeles could force the district to take homes in a community where affordable housing is as scarce as parkland. The specter of ugly eminent domain proceedings could cause still more clashes with the community.

“We’d like to avoid taking homes, but I don’t know that we can,” said Supt. Roy Romer. “We’ve got to have a site for that school.”

The decision comes just as the district is emerging from a bruising two-year debate over whether to finish or abandon Belmont, which lies atop a former oil field near downtown. Convinced that the school could be made safe, the school board voted earlier this month to proceed with the costly project, which community advocates had argued was sorely needed.

As the district resolved one nasty conflict, however, it waded into another.

Initially, the project was envisioned as a model of innovative land use and cooperation between public agencies--L.A. Unified and Los Angeles County, the park’s owner.

The school district wanted to use about half the park during the day in exchange for improving facilities and adding basketball courts and other amenities.

But a determined group of residents in East Los Angeles and Monterey Park mounted a campaign to block the project, which they said would ruin the park.

Their campaign gained steam last year when a consulting firm for the district sent a letter to residents mistakenly saying the school building would be inside the park. It actually would have been next door.

The opponents also got a boost from the Sierra Club, which lobbied against the plan and paid a lawyer to review the school district’s environmental report for the project.

Opponents said they saw the need for another high school in East Los Angeles. But they refused to budge, recalling that the park had already been cut in half three decades ago to make way for the Pomona Freeway.

“The community loves Belvedere Park,” said Eddie Torres, an East Los Angeles resident who led the opposition. “We’re fighting for a cause. We want to see better things happen to the community.”

County and school officials also have been feuding for months over the project--a fight that has pitted elected officials who represent East Los Angeles against one another.

Supervisor Molina and school board member David Tokofsky have blamed each other for the demise of the school project.

Tokofsky said he supported it, but Molina apparently wavered because of community opposition and her view that Tokofsky didn’t do enough to promote it.

In September, Molina appeared before the Monterey Park City Council to argue for the school. Shortly afterward, she wrote to Tokofsky, saying she had withdrawn her support. In the Sept. 20, letter, Molina accused Tokofsky of “passively sitting on the sidelines” as “bureaucrats within your system ... destroyed any effort toward community consensus.”

After Tokofsky publicly questioned Molina’s commitment to building schools in the area, she sent another letter, calling Tokofsky “the sorry sap who objects to every opportunity to build schools in your own district.”

Tokofsky said in an interview that he had worked behind the scenes to muster support for the school.

A Molina spokesman said the letters to Tokofsky were written out of frustration. He insisted that Molina never really withdrew her support from the project, and that her letters were an attempt to prompt action by the district.

In January, Molina asked a team of county officials to review the school district’s environmental report on the project. That team said the district failed to adequately gauge the effect on traffic, parking and public safety.

For example, the environmental report said the project would have no significant impact on police services. But the Sheriff’s Department said it expected more vandalism, thefts and gang activity with the influx of students.

“We had some major issues with whether they could make that project work at that site,” said Lari Sheehan, an assistant administrative officer who oversaw the county’s review. “We didn’t think there was a quick fix.”

District officials revised their environmental study and resubmitted it earlier this month. But it was too late. The county’s chief administrator, David Janssen, had already written to Romer, urging him to withdraw the Belvedere site from consideration. Janssen cited the concerns about public safety and the “mounting public opposition” to the project.

Some school officials privately wonder whether the county gave their plan a fair hearing because of Molina’s apparent reservations and the public opposition. Sheehan said the team evaluated the project on merit alone.

With opposition coming from the county, the school district decided to kill the project--at least for now. But district officials say they haven’t given up on the Belvedere site.

“I’m still convinced that this is going to happen sometime in the future,” said Kathi Littman, who runs the district’s school construction program.