Start Over: A New School Would Be Quite Enough

The Belmont Learning Center controversy is scheduled to return Monday before the Los Angeles school board. The only question on the table is how to finance the estimated $87-million construction costs for a downtown area high school with space for stores. But it is the larger issue that should be addressed: Why won’t the L.A. Unified School District start over and use the standard competitive bidding process to come up with a design for a high school only? The district really ought to perfect its claim of expertise in the education business before it ventures into the dicey world of real estate development.

The project, as currently proposed with space for retail shops beneath the classrooms and separately financed affordable housing units constructed nearby, threatens to become the most expensive public high school ever built in California. But so far, no supermarket or other stores have committed to the deal. So it’s not too late to start over and stick to building just a school.

Supporters of the Belmont Learning Center explain that high expenses can’t be avoided in Southern California. The school will become the district’s largest high school and is expected to enroll up to 5,300 students to accommodate the surging student population growth in the dense neighborhoods surrounding the old Belmont High School.

In order to avoid spending significant time and money busing students, the new school must be near the existing campus, even though large parcels of vacant land are hard to find near downtown Los Angeles. The site purchased by the district slopes and will require leveling. Old oil wells will require capping. Earthquake standards that were toughened after the Northridge temblor also will add to the costs.

These requirements do add up. That’s all the more reason the LAUSD should stick to a common-sense plan of building a school only, at the size and scale required to properly educate the students.

When a district builds a new school, the state typically pays half the cost of construction. The Belmont Learning Center may not receive that subsidy because of a dispute between the district and the State Allocation Board. To make a long story short, the LAUSD may have to pay for the entire project. That fiscally frightening scenario is another reason to start over.

Beginning again would be politically tough. A school board majority has already approved a grand design and a controversial developer and committed to a timetable that would open the school doors in September 1998 in the largely Latino neighborhood. Breaking that promise would anger parents. Their children have been bused for years to schools far from the neighborhood school, Belmont High. They--and the politicians who represent them--want a new school now. So why won’t someone ask the question again: A school, yes--but where is the logic in the school board building stores and including housing as part of the school complex?

The decision by the Proposition BB committee to withhold bond proceeds at least for now from the Belmont Learning Center will force the school district to find more expensive financing if it moves ahead as expected on the project. The school board should clean the slate. There should be a school. But even assuming a supermarket and housing are needed, that’s not the job, nor the expertise, of a school district that has more than enough education issues to worry about.