Innovation in Negotiations

It’s welcome news that the Los Angeles Unified School District’s new real estate team has identified sites for five new San Fernando Valley high schools and is close to making deals on at least two of them. And--more good news--neighbors actually welcome a new school at one site, which is practically unheard of in the not-in-my-backyard Valley.

The district faces no more urgent task than getting its building program in high gear. Districtwide, it needs to build 210 schools over the next six years to keep pace with student enrollment. And that’s assuming schools are on multitrack, year-round schedules.

The greatest need is for new high schools, which are also the most difficult to build. The state requires the district to complete all environmental reviews before buying land for any type of school, and such reviews alone take at least a year. High schools require more land than other schools. Here in the built-out Valley, simply finding a large enough parcel has proven a challenge.

High schools also cost more and take longer to build. And NIMBY neighbors don’t want schools congesting their neighborhoods, period, but have a particular aversion to rowdy high school students.

The district’s real estate division, staffed by an infusion of talent from the private sector, has tried to get around these problems by “thinking outside of the football field,” as Kathi Littman, director of building and planning, once told a gathering of Valley business leaders.

By considering innovations such as putting basketball courts on the roofs of parking structures, high schools could be built on smaller parcels rather than the 25 to 50 acres needed for a traditional high school. The district has also been looking at smaller sites for “academies” that can be tied to already existing schools.

That’s what’s planned for the multistory Anthony Office Building at 8501 Arleta Ave., Sun Valley. The district secured an agreement to purchase the property, now owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, to relieve crowding at nearby Polytechnic High School. The district would lease a portion of the building back to the DWP, which would maintain operations on the lower floors. The third and fourth floors would be used for an academy program attached to Polytechnic, with students doing internships with the DWP.

Negotiations on terms are not yet concluded, but if the deal goes through, classrooms could be up and running as early as the next school year. Neighbors, many of whom now or will have children in crowded Polytechnic, applauded the plan when it was presented at a community meeting.

The deal was negotiated by school Supt. Roy Romer and DWP General Manager S. David Freeman. This kind of innovation and cooperation--between schools and other government agencies, between schools and private businesses, and, yes, between schools and neighborhoods--is crucial to meeting the district’s overwhelming need for new facilities.

It should stand as an example to other negotiations underway, such as a plan to build a high school academy on the Cal State Northridge campus and to include a middle school in redevelopment plans for North Hollywood’s Valley Plaza.