Monday, April 02, 2007

Lest We Forget the Elephant in the Living Room...

This just in from the kind folks at R Neighborhoods Are 1:

On Thurs April 19 at 6:00 pm LAUSD will be holding a meeting at the San Pedro High School Auditorium, 1001 w. 15th Street to "review the status of the preferred site and the project" for the proposed new high school - they are still tied up in court with Bisno re access to the site for the purpose of the EIR work.

Remember SRHS #14? Of course you probably don't and why should you?

"SRHS #14 stands for South Region High School #14 and it is proposed to be built on the Ponte Vista site by the Los Angeles Unified School District. (LAUSD)

This "elephant" is proposed to be a 2,025 seat senior high school designed to relieve actual and/or imagined overcrowding at both San Pedro High School and Narbonne High School.
There is plenty of information about this proposed school well back in the bowels of this blog but I will spare many of you the trouble of looking it up by giving you some of the basic facts about the proposed construction plans and site which LAUSD is considering as their preferred site for the new school.

SRHS #14 is currently being proposed to be built on 15.03 acres of land on the northern portion of the Ponte Vista site, right where Mr. Bisno wants to built the Senior Housing section. LAUSD wants access to up to 24 acres of Mr. Bisno's land for study purposes and develop a better site plan for the new school. Mr. Bisno and his organization are fighting the development of such a large high school and have been to court to stop access to Ponte Vista by folks from LAUSD.

As outlined in the Initial Study for the SRHS #14 project, the campus would have a "Box" of land of approximately 4 acres in which all the permanent buildings will be built as multi-story units. The remaining land will be used for fields, courts, and underground parking (under the basketball courts) for up to about 286 vehicles.

Mr. Bob Bisno, Dr. Richard Vladovic, Mr. Neal Kleiner, myself, and many, many other folks in our community are opposed to such a large school being built anywhere near the Ponte Vista site. I agree with Mr. Kleiner's vision of putting a much smaller high school facility at Angel's Gate where the LAUSD already owns many acres. He believes ninth grade students could go to the new school to relieve overcrowding at San Pedro High School.

The last time I checked the development site for LAUSD, SRHS #14 was still being considered, and I checked just last Friday!

This issue may be the one thing we all might be able to agree on, with regards to the Ponte Vista site. I know many groups in eastern Rancho Palos Verdes and northwest San Pedro would not welcome another large school anywhere in this area. Many of us are welcoming Mary Star with open arms and I believe the folks at that new school site would not want to see another high school so close to them.

I'll take suggestions on a new button logo denouncing the 2,025 seat high school. Perhaps if all of us attend the April 19th meeting at San Pedro High school and wear our buttons, somebody at LAUSD might gather up at least one clue and drop plans to build such a large elephant right smack dab in the middle of our living room.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Mary Star, SPHS #14, and Dodson MS get out of school at the same time. Will LAPD or LASD be in charge of the riot?

Tom said...

Mellonhead

On this we are on the same page. Doing this will be insane. Remember last year when there was a party with Mary Star students and someone got stabbed in the neck with a pencil. And it was a fellow Mary Star student! There is no way to keep these student bodies seperated. Even if they are controlled on campus, they'll just go down the street to Coco's (for example) parking lot and start their fights there.

Anonymous said...

here's hoping bisno and lausd sue each other into oblivion.