High School Alternatives
From today's Breeze.
Hahn asks delay on San Pedro school site vote
The satellite school plan. I actually like this type of plan, in general, but not as it's being put forward now. Some deeper thinking needs to go on for this to be feasable.
Why it's a good idea:
1) Smaller schools allow for the administration to pay much closer attention to what's going on in the classroom, and with the students. Problems are seen sooner and are more difficult to ignore.
2) Sports are less relevant at schools that don't have the facilities. This is a actually a good thing, as it allows schools to place more emphasis on art, music and trades, educational areas that get the short end of the stick and are as critical non-academic activities as sports.
3) Traffic. By distributing traffic around the area, everyone gets it a little worse, but no one get's totally shafted. Nothing will eliminate the total number of car trips going through the community as a whole, but the choke points will be more numerous, but less intense.
issues:
1) Traffic. No studies have been done on the traffic impact of the proposed plan. This is a "no one knows" alternative, in this area, at least.
2) The LAUSD land in Angles Gate Park (where I work, at the Cultural Center) may have environmental issues. No one wants to build a mini-Belmont. From my understanding many of the LAUSD buildings on site are actually storage for toxic materials. Not to mention the history of contamination from the mortar battery and other military facilities. Before you can even propose this, you should have a study done on the site. As it stands, the proposal to use this site for a school is an empty one, without a proper study on the environmental feasablity of the project. And given that the only LAUSD access to the site is on Alma in the middle of a difficult to access residental neighborhood, a creative traffic solution is key to the potential use of that property for any purpose.
3) The number of seats doesn't add up. From the article, I'm counting 500 on the Navy Land, 500 at Angels Gate and 500 at Harbor College. I'm guessing that the alternative plan is counting on the 500 seats at the POLA high school as the final 500 needed to add up to 2000? The LAUSD plan called for a 2000 seat school, in addition to existing LAUSD high school facilities in the area. This alternative, as I see it, is 500 seats short.
My big question mark on the alternative (at first glance) is the seats issue. I have a lot of detail oriented questions and doubts about the Angels Gate option, but that's probably mainly due to my intimacy with the site.
My favourite plan was building the whole campus on the golf course at Harbor College. Eliminating a golf course is a major mitzvah in my book, and what would redeem such a waste of land than to see it turned into a center of learning? Also, having a high school directly adjacent to Harbor College might bring added attention to the needs of that institution, possibly bringing up the quality of the programs there at the same time. Or the 2000 seats could be divided between the Navy site and Harbor College, with 1000 seats at each site. Would that lessen the traffic problems sufficiently to please the community around Western Avenue?
Hahn asks delay on San Pedro school site vote
The satellite school plan. I actually like this type of plan, in general, but not as it's being put forward now. Some deeper thinking needs to go on for this to be feasable.
Why it's a good idea:
1) Smaller schools allow for the administration to pay much closer attention to what's going on in the classroom, and with the students. Problems are seen sooner and are more difficult to ignore.
2) Sports are less relevant at schools that don't have the facilities. This is a actually a good thing, as it allows schools to place more emphasis on art, music and trades, educational areas that get the short end of the stick and are as critical non-academic activities as sports.
3) Traffic. By distributing traffic around the area, everyone gets it a little worse, but no one get's totally shafted. Nothing will eliminate the total number of car trips going through the community as a whole, but the choke points will be more numerous, but less intense.
issues:
1) Traffic. No studies have been done on the traffic impact of the proposed plan. This is a "no one knows" alternative, in this area, at least.
2) The LAUSD land in Angles Gate Park (where I work, at the Cultural Center) may have environmental issues. No one wants to build a mini-Belmont. From my understanding many of the LAUSD buildings on site are actually storage for toxic materials. Not to mention the history of contamination from the mortar battery and other military facilities. Before you can even propose this, you should have a study done on the site. As it stands, the proposal to use this site for a school is an empty one, without a proper study on the environmental feasablity of the project. And given that the only LAUSD access to the site is on Alma in the middle of a difficult to access residental neighborhood, a creative traffic solution is key to the potential use of that property for any purpose.
3) The number of seats doesn't add up. From the article, I'm counting 500 on the Navy Land, 500 at Angels Gate and 500 at Harbor College. I'm guessing that the alternative plan is counting on the 500 seats at the POLA high school as the final 500 needed to add up to 2000? The LAUSD plan called for a 2000 seat school, in addition to existing LAUSD high school facilities in the area. This alternative, as I see it, is 500 seats short.
My big question mark on the alternative (at first glance) is the seats issue. I have a lot of detail oriented questions and doubts about the Angels Gate option, but that's probably mainly due to my intimacy with the site.
My favourite plan was building the whole campus on the golf course at Harbor College. Eliminating a golf course is a major mitzvah in my book, and what would redeem such a waste of land than to see it turned into a center of learning? Also, having a high school directly adjacent to Harbor College might bring added attention to the needs of that institution, possibly bringing up the quality of the programs there at the same time. Or the 2000 seats could be divided between the Navy site and Harbor College, with 1000 seats at each site. Would that lessen the traffic problems sufficiently to please the community around Western Avenue?
4 Comments:
The Navy Land should be used for a new high school. The community deserves a new school. Using the land for a school is maximizing the public benefit of the land. We don't need more housing in San Pedro. Listen up, Janice.
Something tells me that the people who live around that golf course would rather just have it opened up to them for picnicking and the like, rather than paved over for a new (probably ugly, definitely traffic-generating) school.
Incidentally, let's be honest about one thing: in this cultural/political landscape, a school without facilities for sports will just mean that the students won't get art, music, vocational training, or sports.
That's not the case. The POLA high school has no athletic program, and they chose early on to replace that elective content with an arts program. Every student at POLA will be taking an art class every day during their freshman and sophomore year, and they will have a variety of art classes available as electives during their junior and senior years.
Angels Gate Cultural Center is administering that program for them. that's why I brought it up as a potential good thing. Actually the LAUSD has taken it upon themselves to agressively meet the state standards for art instruction in grades K-12 mandated by the state (why? Most likely because art and music classes are one of the very few things you can do that improve test scores without directly teching to the test). Until recently, the standards were essentially going unfulfilled. In 2005, alone we've delivered in-school art classes to 6,600 students, 98& of them in the LAUSD.
There's also a push coming from the governer's office to increase vocational/trades education at the high school level, which would be a good step. The how, when and where on that pushare all pretty undefined at this point, however.
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