Los Angeles School Officials Bring Promising Buy-ins for Angel’s Gate High
Posted by Diana Chapman
In what appeared as a miraculous buy-in package to build a school at Angel’s Gate, Los Angeles school officials this week turned criticisms into advantages for residents to continue the progress toward building an 800-seat campus at the site.
Linda del Cueto, the superintendent for region district 8 which includes all of San Pedro and areas stretching up north to Watts, promised a list of benefits that might encourage even critics to turn their heads around and consider the site. She added the school likely will be for 9th and 10th graders only.
The final decision making, however, is left for Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Richard Brewer, Jr.
The proposed promises included:
Every student attending the school must live in San Pedro
A magnet school will not be built at the site
The proposed school would not be a satellite to San Pedro High, but exist as its own entity and run as its own school.
No “cherry picking,” such as taking only the brightest students from San Pedro High will occur Residents likely will have the “preferred option: to chose which school their child should attend, Angel’s Gate or San Pedro High. School officials believe that just the volume of sports alone will attract residents to the larger, currently overcrowded high school while other parents will want their children in a smaller learning environment.
“It will not be a magnet school,” del Cueto told a small crowd of about 20 at a meeting at San Pedro High School, which included both city and school officials, teacher union representatives and residents in leadership roles. “We will not bus kids into this community. We already have two magnets (at SP High).
“What’s hard about this, let’s face it, we haven’t built high schools for years and years…There’s really so much in the air. The athletics really helps drives the question.”
In addition, the superintendent said her team was considering the Angel’s Gate High School for 9th and 10th graders only, and that school officials, closer to the opening date of 2012, would design it as a small learning community – a system that groups students in smaller houses with the same interests.
The district is currently adopting smaller learning communities across the board to cope with the giant population of many of its current schools. San Pedro High School, for example, was built in 1936. By 1970, the campus housed 72 classrooms with 2,500 students. The student population, however has climbed way beyond its capacity and now has 3,561 students, said Principal Bob DiPietro.
That extensive overcrowding – where students complain about standing up in classrooms and barely making it to class on time due to swollen crowds in the hallways – has driven the district to look for other options, such as building at Angel’s Gate.
For nearly three decades, the school district has owned 47 acres at Angel’s Gate. The proposal would allow for the 800 seat campus to continue an expansion of up to 1,215 students at a later date.
Residents near Angel’s Gate have fought sharply against the proposed school, saying that the traffic will clog residential streets, increase accidents on an already accident-prone Alma Street, ruin the serenity of the area, drive out foxes living at the site – and destroy the wholesomeness of the neighborhood with noise pollution.
School officials said they are attempting to mitigate these issues. Parking is a repeated concern. However, Doug Epperhart, with the Coastal Neighborhood Council indicated that school officials should meet with the committee planning the Angel’s Gate master plan. The master plan, which develops the park part of the area owned by the city of Los Angeles, is considering a 600-space underground parking structure, he said.
“I was very impressed,” said Epperhart of Monday’s meeting (4/14/08), who had criticized the district earlier for not trying to meet the residents needs.