Schools Fail to Justify Home Grab

When 53 homes were destroyed in the fire that swept Baldwin Hills in July, 1985, it was a major tragedy, with the anguish of the families prompting public concern and news for weeks.

But just imagine if that fire had not been controlled after it had destroyed nearly 2,000 homes and displaced 5,000 persons, what the magnitude of the tragedy, and response, would have been.

Well, that is the estimated number of homes that will be destroyed and persons displaced under the ill-conceived expansion plans of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

And beyond the obscene numbers, it is a far greater tragedy than the Baldwin Hills fire for the reason that much of it could be avoided with a modicum of common sense, public courtesy, conscientious planning and imaginative design.

Some takings may be necessary to meet future school needs. But so far, the district has shown little compassion and less imagination in developing viable alternatives to blockbusting and bulldozing.

The taking of homes should be considered only when all other possibilities to accommodate the expansion have been exhausted.

That the school district, reacting to an initial wave of community protests, reduced the number of its proposed expanded and new sites from 42 to 30 is a clear indication of the arbitrary planning process of the agency. Were those 12 sites really needed in the first place? Does that mean if there had not been protests the houses there would have been condemned and demolished? Why were they spared and not others?

This has led to further questions, such as what really are the district’s expansion needs? What are those needs based on? How come the district--that a few years ago was closing dozens of schools--now needs to expand so precipitously?

Between February, 1982, and June, 1984, the district closed 22 schools. And here it is, a few years later, and the district is scrambling to assemble new sites. That does not engender confidence in the district’s planning process.

One hopes the current scrambling is not just because the state has made available a few hundred million dollars of construction funds, the use of which could nicely pad a bureaucracy from periodic budget cuts.

Could much of this plan be motivated not by the projected educational needs of the city’s children, but by the nefarious need of bureaucrats to justify their own existence and an ambitious construction program to pay off some political debts?

The targeted communities also have been asking questions, such as why homes must be taken for school playgrounds, which are often used for parking for teachers and administrators, when streets could be closed during school hours for the same purposes?

Also, why can’t the district utilize existing facilities better through renovations, sensitively designed additions and redistricting, or by the imaginative recycling of commercial and industrial structures?

There have been reams of excellent questions by various concerned community groups and local representatives, in particular Councilman Michael Woo and State Sen. David Roberti (D-Los Angeles), but few answers by the district.

Also starting to ask questions about the expansion, as well as they should, are the city Planning Commission and Planning Department. The district’s proposed construction program has ramifications far beyond education that should be of deep concern to the city’s planners, as well as others involved with shaping the city.

In response to an earlier column in which I accused the district of not doing its homework in coming up with a projected increase of 75,578 students to justify the need for new and expanded schools, I received from a consultant firm identified as Criterion Inc. a thick demographic study it had done for the district.

Along with the report came a letter in which the Dallas-based firm declared “we are willing to schedule a meeting with you so we can discuss our methodological approach in detail.”

Not particularly anxious to be sandbagged by bureaucrats and their hired guns, but wanting an objective opinion, I asked a respected educator who recently retired as a senior administrator after 30 years with the New York City Board of Education, to review the report.

While declaring that the demographic analysis was interesting, he said it lacked perspective and raised more questions than it answered, such as the basis of the mathematical formulas used to project the statistics into hard figures in the future. “You really can play games with that to serve the interests of those paying for the study,” said the educator.

He noted that in making projections, the study did not appear to take into consideration shifting family structures and values, such as the birthrate among Latinos most likely declining as their socio-economic status rises, or the placement of their children in private or parochial schools.

He also said the report ignored the possible effect on projected facilities of changing educational theories and practices, such as developing work programs for dropouts instead of their being carried as students, and the fast tracking and special needs of, say, the growing number of Asian students.

Among items he wanted to know more about was the present utilization of facilities, as well as the basis of projected housing patterns. “I think it is important to know if they took into consideration such factors as proposed transportation systems and anticipated zoning changes,” he said.

Similar questions have been asked by community groups .

“The report is two-dimensional, and not the sort of document on which I would want to base a decision that effects thousand of persons,” he said. The educator added it certainly would not float in New York City or, for that matter, in Beverly Hills, where education and community groups are more coalesced.

Asked to grade the report, the educator gave it an “I,” for incomplete. Once again the district has flunked its responsibility to the city.

MAKING SENSE. In the pleasant enclave of Melrose Hill in southeast Hollywood, residents are debating a proposal to designate the neighborhood a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone. For anyone concerned with the area’s sense of place, and future, there really should be no debate.

As a historic district, residents would be able to review proposed local construction projects to determine whether they are consistent with the architectural style and spirit of the neighborhood, at present a well-scaled eclectic mix of houses built during the first 20 years or so of this century.

While only advisory, these powers would insure the neighborhood some protection against slapdash housing additions and overscaled apartment slabs. The latter dingbats seem to be rising in pockets of the city these days like toadstools in a lawn after a rain, to replace mini-malls as the current bane of neighborhoods.

Being a historic district also should help bind the residents to rally for more positive actions, such as tree plantings, street maintenance, neighborhood watch, while at the same time lending the area a sense of pride. This inevitably translates into higher property values, which one would think would appeal to the Philistines at present opposing the designation.