Will the LAUSD actually listen?

Last night’s Echo Park Improvement Association Neighborhood Issues Committee meeting brought out well over 30 people to Williams Hall at Barlow Hospital to discuss community concerns about CRES#14, an LAUSD school being built near the busy intersection of Alvarado and Sunset Blvd.

Chieko Rupp, now retired from the LAUSD, spoke at the meeting as the “point person” of the design team that is writing the proposal for CRES#14. Although not an official rep from the LAUSD, she and the team will be submitting the final project proposal to the LAUSD for review.

Here’s a run-down of what is being discussed for the future of CRES#14:

  • It will be Pre-kindergarten through eighth grade
  • Because the school was initially built to alleviate over-crowded elementary schools (and continued to be the focus even after elementary schools became under-enrolled), the school will include elementary age students. One of the reasons include construction – some classrooms were built specifically for smaller children.
  • It will be a “span” school
  • Initial plans are that it will pull predominantly from areas to the south and west of the school, areas that do not include Echo Park. This, however, is not set in stone, but it’s the “boundary office” that determines which areas the school will pull from. Schools include Virgil and King, which are heavily overcrowded
  • Curriculum focus will be music, arts, language and technology
  • Capacity of the school is approximately 800, but they expect around 500 with about 35 classrooms (three may be used for a senior citizen’s organization)
  • Will be a single zone of choice, meaning kids won’t be forced to go in there but will instead have the opportunity to apply

It is difficult to completely understand some of the complicated terminology revolving “choice” schools, “span” schools, etc., but what we do understand are the concerns of the community when it comes to the LAUSD opening up a Pre-K through 8 school (and run by a charter school) in Echo Park. Many of the residents at the meeting focused on getting the point across that:

  • Echo Park should benefit from the school: 50 homes were destroyed, hundreds of people were displaced. This community needs a middle school, why not use the new school to provide this much-needed service? Why destroy a part of our community only to keep us from primarily benefiting?
  • We don’t need another elementary school: Existing elementary schools are losing teachers, and enrollment is going down. Opening up another elementary school could negatively impact our beloved elementary schools which, if they were to close, would severely impact the community.
  • Make CRES#14 a middle school, or at least make it the primary focus: Assuming we can’t do anything about there being elementary-age classes offered, if  the focus remain on middle school students it might help alleviate community concerns about our schools. However, there’s no guarantee that this will actually be followed through by the LAUSD and the chosen charter school until the decisions are made.

The question is: Will the LAUSD actually listen to the concerns of the community, and cooperate?

The good news? We were promised that nothing, absolutely nothing was set in stone and that we are still in proposal phase. There will be additional meetings prior to the proposal submital for community members to provide input. Deadline for the proposal is December 1, 2010, and the Board is schedule to make the final decision on February 22, 2011. Keep your eye out for these meetings here on Echo Park Now, and follow the EPIA website for announcements regarding those meetings.

Also make sure to follow The Eastsider LA for more detailed analysis of CRES#14 and the issues surrounding it.

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  1. Luiza says:

    Having been one of the people for the school. ONLY reason being was LAUSD was going to pull ememinet domain and would have owned the land anyways. I only he home owners to get a fair price for there property. As for the Right Side Colition. I think they are a bunch of self serving childless people who should stick to what they know their DOGS, not kids. Having gone to LAUsd on several occations, the sign making, the door knocking. BUT we the parents/grandparents DID tell Monica Garcia and Yollie flores ” WE NEED A MIDDLE SCHOOOL NOT AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. WHAT DID THEY DO? THEY OPENED SAL CASTRO MIDDLE ACROSS FROM OLD BELMONT. WHAT A JOKE. No one is happy about the outcome of this project. Most of the people with kids have been gentified out of Echo Park, which made many old timey E.P’ers happy.The bigots! . All surrounding schools are sitting with empty schools room’s thinking of ways to get kids into there schools. Let this DOG die already. How many more lausd meetings does it take for everyone to understand. We the people can not fight a huge corporation. P.S the one with the Imimment domain information was Mr. Francisco Torrero who at the time served as a parent board member for LAUSD. and now sits on the board of the neighborhood council. Based on his information, many people including myself went pro school. If I had known Mr. Torrero to be the BIG lier he truly is I would have lobbied HARD against it. I didn’t know at the time that a man who dresses up as a deacon or whatever he is can be such a lier in the house of GOD,to the point he accepted the Afican Espiscopalian man of the year. What the church didn’t have any real black men in Los Angeles. Panama people do not consider themselves to be BLACK. No wonder our local episcopal church is losing it’s members. To SAD!

  2. Leonard Goodman Isenberg says:

    The answer to the question “Will LAUSD Listen” is clearly no. Check out http://www.perdaily.com to understand in great detail why LAUSD as long constituted will never listen to the public, because it is against the interests of LAUSD administration that is doing fine under the status quo even if the students and teachers are not. We have over 160 posts about what is really going on at LAUSD and how to fix it.

  3. Mark says:

    I can’t clearly get the overview of the full impact of this. It might very well be doing just what the people complaining want. If this school is drawing from the area immediately to its west, it would be drawing students who otherwise would be attending schools such as Logan. That is a benefit to Logan! If it draws enough students who otherwise would be attending Logan, then Logan would have room to take students who might otherwise attend Elysian Heights, which is beneficial to Elysian Heights. Or, maybe it would provide enough space to allow high grade levels at Logan.

    But I can’t really tell as this story just does not provide the info needed for me to determine that.

    As for those saying we need a middle school, well, some of the grades at this school are just that, so what’s the complaint?

    The fact that it is built for 800 but — for now — will only have 500 students, that is good planning. You build such an edifice for what you expect the circumstances to be 20 years down the line, not for today.

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