Saturday Deadline For Public Input on Charter School in Van de Kamps Campus

With just six days left for the public to help decide the future of Northeast L.A.’s first proposed community college, a group of local activists is urging residents to demand that the historic Van de Kamps Bakery building in Glassell Park be used for adult education purposes and not as a site for a charter high school currently housed on the premises.

The Van de Kamps Coalition, a group of Northeast L.A. organizations and individuals, is encouraging people in neighborhoods stretching from Cypress Park to Eagle Rock to write to the board of trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District to end what the coalition describes as the “illegal use” of the Van de Kamps campus by a “politically-connected” charter high school.

In February 2012, the Van de Kamps Coalition successfully sued LACCD for allowing the Alliance For College Ready Public Schools, a charter school whose board of directors includes former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan and philanthropist Eli Broad, to operate on the campus on a 10-year temporary lease without conducting a new environmental review on the school’s impact on neighboring traffic.

The LACCD, which appealed the court’s order to set aside the charter school’s lease, conducted an Environmental Impact Review in May 2013, whose details were released in a poorly advertised public meeting at the Van de Kamps campus on June 13. It’s this EIR that the public has the right to respond to until Saturday.

Located off the 2 freeway on seven acres of prime real estate bordering Fletcher Drive and San Fernando Road, the Van de Kamps campus is the centerpiece of the 2003 Northeast Campus Master Plan. Through a partnership of public agencies, community organizations, elected officials and funding sources, the plan outlined the opening in 2005 of a community college on the site—15 years after the Van de Kamps bakery shut down and local preservationists helped save the building from destruction.

Although the Van de Kamps campus was built with $91 million in community college bond funds for which the public pays an average of $100 to $200 in annual taxes, according to the Van de Kamps Coalition, the proposed college itself has yet to be born.

“The $91 million was spent to build the college on the basis of an innovative plan to offer a wide range of fees-based community service courses that would generate enough income to operate the Van de Kamps campus without the need for state operating funds,” explained Daniel Wright, attorney for the Van de Kamps Coalition.

A detailed 2004 study of the economic feasibility of the Northeast Campus Master Plan validated that it would work, and “that was the basis for the LACCD Board to proceed to spend all those millions of dollars,” said Wright.

But in 2009, citing California’s budget crisis, the LACCD board handed a newly constructed building meant for the college to the Alliance charter school. The remaining part of the campus—the former bakery building with its iconic architecture—was illegally remodeled using state bond funds not meant for that purpose and rented as office space to nonprofit groups and city officials who oversee work training programs, according to Wright.  

“If LACCD is persuaded that the community demands its community college back, there will be time for the charter school to make an orderly transition to a new and more appropriate location in the community,” Wright said. “This is not about closing the charter school, as some say.”

The Van de Kamps Coalition is asking anyone who wants Northeast L.A.'s first community college to service the community to write to the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District, located at 770 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90017.

Correspondents may use a form letter, which is attached to this article, to write their comments. Alternatively, they may email LACCD Board President, Miguel Santiago at msantiago@email.laccd.edu or leave voicemails for him at (213) 891-2044.  All correspondence from the community is required to be acknowledged by the LACCD and published in the new Environmental Impact Report.

Click here to access the LACCD website.
Click here to view the Van de Kamps Coalition website.
Click here to view the Van de Maps Coalition Facebook page.