Adults misbehave, kids are collateral damage
by Howard Blume | LA Times/LA Now | http://lat.ms/IQ2JjH
May 4, 2012 | 10:43 pm :: A court ruling has invalidated the lease of a high-performing charter school in Glassell Park, threatening it with closure when the school year ends in June.
The Alliance Environmental Science and Technology School, whose students have some of the highest test scores in the Los Angeles Unified School District, will lose its campus under a ruling Friday by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ann I. Jones.
Her ruling came in a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Community College District filed by a coalition of community groups over the college district’s compliance with environmental laws. The coalition had challenged the legality of the lease between the college district and Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, which operates the high school.
Jones ruled that the college district never assessed the impact of the charter school on the surrounding area. An earlier environmental impact report had envisioned the site, near Fletcher Drive and San Fernando Road, as a satellite campus of the college district.
The California Environmental Quality Act “demands the very public accountability and analysis of environmental effects,” Jones wrote in her ruling. “The illegal lease approvals ought to be set aside.”
The community group wants the college district to pursue the original plan of operating a program for adults at the site, said neighborhood activist Miki Jackson.
“We want the community college there,” Jackson said. “There are studies showing how badly this type of adult education is needed in this area.”
Her group was also concerned about issues related to the charter school, such as increased traffic.
“Everyone at the charter school comes and leaves in one bubble,” Jackson said. “The traffic has gotten a whole lot worse.”
Her group is called the Van de Kamp’s Coalition because it originally organized to save the Dutch-styled factory bakery that occupied the site. Developers had proposed demolishing the historic structure and erecting a big-box retailer and a Burger King. The activists won that battle, and eventually the college district bought the site and renovated the distinctive building.
But college officials have said they lack money to operate a full program, a situation that the court ruling won’t change. The charter school pays $500,000 annually to lease a new building that also occupies the site.
Charter schools are free and publicly funded but managed by independent groups.
The facility includes computer labs, science labs, a college-style lecture hall and a fitness room used by parents as well as students. The community college schedules some classes there during afternoons and evenings.
The Alliance school is three years into a five-year lease, but had planned to remain at the site indefinitely.
Alliance Chief Executive Judy Burton called the ruling unexpected and said she had no alternative site available.
“The parents of these kids are also in this community, but their voices were not heard,” Burton said. “It is truly sad when adult agendas trump the needs of children, especially disadvantaged children who are finally getting the education they deserve.”
An appeal is anticipated, and Burton said parents will receive a letter informing them of her determination to keep the school open.
There is enough adult misbehavior here to fill all the naughty corners in all the buildings of the community college district and city hall. And, because adults acted badly, a successful school will be thrown out like an orphan in the rain; an unintended consequence of corner cutting, hubris and greed.
1) The voters voted-for and the taxpayers are paying for a community college campus on the Van de Kamps site – NOT a charter school and the offices of Mayor Tony’s workforce development program partners. A Community College is what we wanted, that’s what we (you+I) are paying for …and that’s what we expect.
2) Judy Burton is one of the finest educators I have ever worked with. In community outreach Alliance represented that they would only be on the VdK site for 5 years. In a May 2009 email, Burton said: “…It is common practice for Alliance charter schools in general to incubate at temporary locations and then move to a permanent location. The Alliance will be working on developing its permanent site while we are leasing.(at VdK)” The above Times citation that Alliance “planned to remain at the site indefinitely” is a flip-flop of Brobdingnagian proportion.
3) This court decision – exclusively focused on CEQA violations – has been a long time in coming and has a tortuous history. LACCD has ignored the judge’s previous rulings requiring environmental review – making no effort at compliance or even good-faith negotiation with the plaintiffs – which the judge ordered.
4) The CEQA violation is not as important as the wholesale disregard for the will of the voters+taxpayers and the need-for -- and broken promise-of -- a community college campus in Northeast LA. Allegedly this misconduct was facilitated by the mayor’s office in city hall – which allegedly proposed the lease between Alliance and the LACCD and the various City of LA workforce partners who operate on the campus. LACCD – already under investigation by various government agencies for bad management of bond funds - used local and state bond funds to acquire property, develop a community college facility and then rented it (at less than market value or taxpayer’s cost) to the charter operator and the mayor’s workforce partners. LACCD – operating as an ad-hoc community redevelopment agency and/or speculative real estate developer – has also purchased adjacent real estate currently occupied by Denny’s, Pollo Loco and Auto Zone franchises …even though the LACCD has no declared plans or established need for that land. That is poster-child misuse of community college construction bond funds and the public trust.
5) Alliance has been party to this lawsuit all along – and knew that the judge had ordered LACCD to do a supplemental l environmental review. That they didn’t recognize that the LACCD wasn’t in compliance with the court order demonstrates a lack of paying attention, bad legal advice, reliance on insider political clout – or all of the above. Alliance is a victim of LACCD’s misbehavior – but they are also arguably unwitting recipients-and-beneficiaries of of stolen property. And, the CEQA violation notwithstanding: Alert the Irony Police -- their school is Alliance Environmental Science and Technology High School.
6) 4LAKids’ job isn’t to propose a solution or argue with the judge and the enforcement of the California Environmental Quality Act. But it is obvious/oblivious that the promised Northeast LA Community College will not open in September. Perhaps the LACCD could throw themselves on the court’s mercy with a writ of mea culpa, promise to comply with the court’s order …and the charter school’s lease could be allowed to continue for one more year. Saving the kids from the streets.
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