Part II- New High School ("H.S. #9") for Downtown Area

A little more from where I left off on the 3/7/09 posting ( http://lincolnquicknotes.blogspot.com/2009/03/lausd-back-to-future-high-school-hs-9.html ) about the construction of this high school on the site of the old LAUSD Headquarters at Grand Ave. and Cesar Chavez (formerly Sunset) Blvd. You can't miss it if you have driven by the Music Center just a few blocks away, since the design's tower focal point is something that catches the eye immediately.

If you haven’t seen it or you did see it but did not know what it was, check the photos and drawings referenced and linked all through the rest of this posting. And when you see those images, think of these things: “Nothing is free,” “Would a simpler project have educated our students as well and been ready significantly faster?” and “Who is in charge of making spending decisions of taxpayer dollars, and what happened here?”

HERE NOW ARE SOME MORE VIEWS OF THE PROJECT- and commentary, of course:
(A lot of photos of this project on a downtown blog: "Angelic Downtown Los Angeles," http://www.angelenic.com/79/central-la-high-school-9-shows-some-skin/ -they must have worked or lived nearby for all the views and time intervals)

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A FURTHER CRITIQUE of this project was in the L.A. TIMES, nearly a year old now, and it is an outstanding one in my view- This was another of those Steve Lopez' topics, this on covering the second most expensive school (behind only the Beaudry High School project) in the U.S., all projects from LAUSD. If you missed it or want to see the mild way he gives some harsh criticism, see:
”The design of L.A. Unified's new arts high school is convoluted and costly,” Steve Lopez, May 4, 2008 http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez4-2008may04,0,4743795.column This story led to an L.A. TIMES blog with some wacky comments by readers as justification for the expense. The billionaire, Eli Broad, happens to be the moving force for the design choice. He wanted it to fit in with the other downtown project, "The Grand Avenue Project," that also is currently sucking tax dollars and is way behind schedule construction.

It was the yielding to the political influence that put this school on the road to extravagance in construction costs and more delay- 2 more years- before any students could benefit from the new school. That is another cost that doesn’t get to be figured into projects, the cost of students who move on through high school while the project is plodding along in various stages of completion. Hope as they might, being able to spend a part of their high school years in a new facility is not in the cards for these students.

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If you want photos- there are lots of very good ones at various stages of construction:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=529012
“Skyscraper City” blog thread on the LAUSD High School for the Visual & Performing Arts #9 U/C,
This site has some very good architect’s images of a completed project and the layout is diagrammed very well, maybe too well in this post-9-11 security age, but very impressive on a visual basis.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=30043180
Another thread of the same blog, with some beautiful interior photos from DEC. 2008.

The entry on that blog (#62), “L.A.'s new arts school an expensive social experiment,” repeats the text of the L.A. Times story of December 22, 2008.
Original story at;
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/dec/22/local/me-arts22?s=o&n=o&rd=www.google.com&sessid=7c247f2068c353b12d60caaf8b218b5463185fbc&pg=2&pgtp=article&eagi=&page_type=article&exci=2008_12_22_local_me-arts22
Lots of criticism here on several levels, costs being the big one, but LAUSD’s operational style is again responsible for bringing us projects of astronomical expense of taxpayer dollars, and 2 years here of time that students were shortchanged for the sake of architecture and image priorities that themselves are of very questionable value and come from POLITICAL influence to serve other agendas.


Things for the district have changed and while more schools are built, student enrollment is dropping. The District is constantly lagging behind in addressing and responding to what the needs are simply because the District is so huge and has an overload of bureaucracy to wade through before anything actually happens. I don’t believe that smaller school districts have this situation and can therefore make more timely response, keeping their districts within some order that avoids a lot of collateral problems found in LAUSD, like waste, unaccountability, structure maintenance and overall periodic reviews of status for proper controls.

As for who will be attending this “High School #9,” It does look like the students will still be geographically selected for the majority of spaces in this school according to the story.

Former school board member David Tokofsky said he believed the overcrowding
problem had been solved, leaving no need for the school to focus on the
neighborhood. He said the school should reach out for "talent from Banning
[High], from Pacoima, from Huntington Park."

In contrast to this enlightened view to use of a specialized resource, Supt. Alonzo sounds as if local students should have preference as some form of alms for the District's misdeeds of the past, which I think is a typical style of decision-making that you see happen with the LAUSD.

But Alonzo and others insist that the district has, in effect, a social
obligation to make up for decades of neglect in the areas just west of
downtown.

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HERE IS A DIFFERENT LOOK AT THE SCHOOL, coming from an achitectural view.
If it’s a pro-design commentary, and one that grossly UNDERestimates the construction time (“The much anticipated October opening …has been delayed a year.” From the Nov. 2007 statement) AND COSTS (“The $171 Million project is expected to open in late 2008.”), both wrong, at least 1/3 more was added to costs, and an another full year delay beyond that until the first students can enter in September 2009.
“Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Los Angeles Flagship High School delayed one year,” http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=1607 Monday 19 Nov 2007.

LAUSD Back to the Future High School, HS #9, "parent tours"?

NOTE:
"DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME" starts tonight- set CLOCKS AHEAD 1 HOUR TONIGHT.

-------------------------- there was no posting for Friday, as everyone just is pretty busy with thinking of the weekend and needs a break from reading somebody else's opinions, including that somebody. I still collected a little more work to present, and here's part of much more about the LAUSD's activity that will cover a few more days of postings. Just a break from the City politics for a brief moment- not that they have improved one bit, either, but LAUSD needs some attention here, too. ----------------

NEW HIGH SCHOOL ("H.S. #9") FOR DOWNTOWN AREA:

The LAUSD is posting invitations for "School Tours for parents and their children to see the new LAUSD high school number 9 (built on the old LAUSD HQ site at Grand and Sunset/now Cesar Chavez) that is all done with construction. This update on the school situation is one that I accidentally discovered in checking a notice I saw posted at local LA Public Library branch this week. Now they need students for September 2009 to start it off. There were no other copies to take with me, so this is based on what I remember- I'll go back later anyway and check it again. The notice added that there would be NO senior class for the entering students in September 2009.

The announcement did not entirely clear up whether they decided that it was for a split of enrollment for local students and city-wide art-oriented students. Still lots of questions on the operations, but parent tours with their children is the purpose of the announcement. It sounds like this was going to be for city-wide enrollment.

CURRENT STATUS:
The focus will be the "arts"- meaning drama, art and music and maybe a few other things I can't think of now. About 1200 enrollment is the number set per the flyer; the dilemma before this time was whether a state-of-the-art school would be for the "local" population, like a generic school would be, or if all the specialty facilities would be used for an "art-music" school, open to students citywide like the County's Arts school does in County territory.

Apparently that's solved by "district-wide enrollment," and logically so, a very rare outcome for LAUSD Board. They must have hired an outside consultant.

If you have a state-of-the-art facility, it would be wasting that resource to have a population that does not fully use all of the potential that's available. So now that they sunk a ton of money into the second most expensive school construction in the entire United States (and I really doubt that LASUD wanted to win that title) they should play it out for BEST use of the place.

If it's used for "general" education- which isn't even offered in LAUSD anymore under that label, replaced by the "A through G" college track for all, then that would be some primitive thinking showing up again in LAUSD, like having a Ferrari for daily driving in city traffic.
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A REVEALING LOOK AT THIS PROJECT BY THE L.A. WEEKLY
Going to the L.A. WEEKLY for an examination of the LAUSD's second most costly school construction (over $230 million, on a basic design school price of $30 million) and delayed readiness of 2 years (first September 2007, then 2009), they did a very thorough job here,

"Art School or LAUSD Folly?
A gorgeous downtown high school has no plan, no curriculum — but sure looks fab," By Erica Zora Wrightson
Published on September 03, 2008 at 4:55pm
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-04/news/art-school-or-lausd-folly/

L.A. Weekly has become the leading source of uncovering a lot of what's going on in L.A. The L.A. Times sometimes finds and sometimes just finds and ignores, with the same now for the other paper, the L.A. Daily News, that used to be more reliable for covering city issues.

The article is so revealing of all kinds of examples of mismanagement, arrogance in operations, and outright waste of time and money in the educational system and you can see that maybe the LAUSD still doesn't have a clue on how to improve student performance, trying out expensive experiments. It's hard to have faith in an institution that spent.

For all the value that "arts" in education have in society, was this the best choice for a struggling school district to plow funds into? Doesn't it sound more like a specialty school that vastly overshoots the aim to produce educated students, competent to fend for themselves in society and even ready to pursue higher education without most of them needing semesters of remedial classes to account for inadequacies of the system like it is now?

What WAS the priority? Was it a specialty school to fulfill the wishes of big shots in society, or was it to create a basic complete high school facility to start producing better-educated students than we produce now?

LAUSD could have had a functional and new school two years ago for lots less, with enough change leftover for another half-dozen or so schools. The school would already be in use NOW, working at it's purpose already a couple of years to give our students that better education that the newly constructed schools were supposed to provide. But LAUSD did not go that way, did it?

(still more to come on this topic)