Officials Plan to Reopen 3 Valley Schools

Three San Fernando Valley public schools that were shuttered in the early 1980s due to low enrollment could reopen as soon as September 2004 as so-called academies, offering students the chance to focus on particular subjects.

Oso Avenue Elementary in Woodland Hills is set to reopen as a 400-student high school, and Hesby Street Elementary in Encino will be turned into a K-8 campus for 530 students, with both schools focusing on art and design. Hughes Middle School in Woodland Hills will become a 1,600-student high school highlighting finance and marketing.

Up to $500,000 has already been set aside for each school for site planning. The reopenings will force several private schools that lease the campuses to move elsewhere and will certainly bring change to their neighborhoods.

Lycee International of Los Angeles, which runs a first- through eighth-grade French bilingual school, and the West Valley Hebrew Academy will be vacating the Oso Avenue School property in June. School district offices housed at Hesby Street School will be moved to an undetermined site in the Valley.

The Hughes Adult Learning Center at the Hughes Middle School site will be relocated to Enadia Way School in Canoga Park, which is now being leased to West Valley Christian School. Offices for the adult school will move to Platt Ranch Elementary School, which is now leased to Lewis Carroll Academy of the Arts and a Montessori school.

A top school district official said reopening Oso Avenue School as the San Fernando Valley Art & Design Center will bring prestige to the area. The asphalt playground that has become a patchwork of cracks and weeds will be replaced with tennis courts and exercise equipment for students and residents.

“I want something that fits into the community, something this community can be proud of,” said Bob Collins, superintendent for the southwest Valley area of the Los Angeles Unified School District. “This could be a spectacular place for the community and the students,” said Collins, who is overseeing the Oso Avenue and Hesby Street school projects.

Collins said the school district will involve the community in many of the decisions involved in turning the elementary school into a high school, right down to the color of the buildings. A community meeting specifically addressing the Oso Avenue site will be held Monday at Parkman Middle School in Woodland Hills.

Although residents near the Oso Avenue school want the nearly eight-acre campus improved, they are concerned about how the additional cars, many driven by teenagers, will fit into their serene neighborhood.

“No matter how talented they are, teenagers are teenagers,” said Shirley Blessing, board member of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization, who has lived a mile from the school for 32 years. “I’m concerned about the possibility of narcotics coming in and break-ins. I have a whole lot of unanswered questions.” Blessing said most in the community would prefer to have the site refurbished and reopened as an elementary school.

While Collins said residents’ concerns are legitimate, he believes most of the worries will not materialize. Enrollment at the school will be limited to 400 students, 20% of whom will have mental or physical disabilities, while a typical L.A. Unified high school serves 3,000 to 5,000 students.

Students who want to attend the school must apply and present a portfolio of their work for consideration. Art will be integrated into their regular studies, and students will be offered such electives as drawing, photography and graphic design.

“It will be a totally different school,” Collins said. “We’ll have kids who really have a goal and an interest in art.”

Between 1970 and 1987, the school district closed 23 elementary schools districtwide, mainly due to low enrollment, according to spokeswoman Shannon Johnson. Of those, seven schools were converted to special education, adult or alternative schools. Five were reopened as elementary schools from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. One was sold, and another was traded for property to build another school. Of the remaining nine sites, seven are leased to private schools and two are used for district offices.