Today is the Deadline For Your Comment on Charter School in Van De Kamps Campus

By Laura Gutierrez and Miki Jackson

Friends and Neighbors:

Did you vote in favor of the three Los Angeles Community College District bond issues to improve and expand adult community college services?

Do you now pay an average $100-$200 per year in taxes for it?

You have a brief opportunity to change the ill-conceived 2009 decision of the LACCD Board of Trustees to "temporarily" lease our $91 million Van de Kamps Community College Campus on Fletcher Drive, just off Eagle Rock Boulevard, to a politically-connected charter high school for another decade or more.

An official Environmental Impact Report comment period for the public closes today, Saturday, June 22, for your voice to be heard.  

Background:

(If you know the sad story of the Van de Kamps Campus and are ready to send a letter to the Board of Trustees demanding our community college back, skip this history and jump to the form letter below.)

The Van de Kamps campus located on Fletcher Drive and San Fernando Road was built with community college bond funds. No less than $91 million were spent to build it. It was constructed based upon an innovative plan to offer a wide variety of fee-based community service courses. Projections showed that these courses themselves would generate enough income to operate the Van de Kamps campus without the need for state operating funds.  

A detailed 2004 study of the economic feasibility of this plan validated it would work. The LACCD Board spent all those millions of dollars building the Van de Kamps campus after the 2004 study showed it would work. Then in 2009, as the campus neared completion, dirty politics intervened.

LACCD Board Trustees Mona Field, Sylvia Scott-Hayes and LACCD administrators came to public meetings and told us that due to the state budget problems, LACCD did not have operating funds to open Van de Kamps. Mona and Sylvia were not truthful with us—an epic fail in today's slang parlance.

Van de Kamps was intended to open using revenues generated under its 2003 operating plan that did not depend upon the state budget. Ignoring all objections, trustees like Mona Field and Sylvia Scott-Hayes voted to lease away the Van de Kamps campus to a charter high school run by Richard Riordan/Eli Broad.

The Van de Kamps Coalition, a group of Northeast L.A. organizations and individuals, sued LACCD for changing the VDK Campus uses without new environmental review. The VDK Coalition won and the court ordered the LACCD to invalidate the charter school lease and prepare a proper environmental review before considering approving any further change of use from the original community college use.

But the dirty politics continues. LACCD is defying the court's order by refusing to set aside the charter school lease. And it has prepared an Environmental Report that it can use to either continue to lease to the politically-connected charter school, or to go in a direction of community college/university courses needed by young adults in our community.

If LACCD Board is persuaded that the community demands its community college back, there will be time for the current charter school to make an orderly transition to a new and more appropriate location in the community. This not about closing the charter school. It will adjust at a new location.

Now is your chance to tell the LACCD Board of Trustees, Northeast Los Angeles deserves its share of community college services our taxes paid for.

What You Can Do:

Pasted below is a form letter you can cut and paste into an email to send to LACCD. Every single letter sent in from the community is required to be published by LACCD in the Environmental Impact Report and responded to. Please feel free to tell the LACCD Board what you think of their actions with respectful and measured language appropriate for the environmental input process.

If you have EIR expertise, it can be reviewed at www.laccd.edu

More information about the Van de Kamps issue can be viewed at www.vandekamps.org

Click here to read a six-part Los Angeles Times investigation into the Van de Kamps scandal, titled "Billions to Spend: How a $5.7-billion program to rebuild L.A.'s community colleges went astray."

Conclusion:

Are you curious to see whether Mona Field will choose to listen to you or Richard Riordan/Eli Broad? Would you like to see if we together can collectively raise enough protest to persuade the LACCD Board into doing the right thing?

Then make a vow to demand that the LACCD Board stop considering further abuse of your tax dollars and do the right thing by opening the satellite community college campus promised to voters when they voted for the LACCD Bond Measures.

And please: Vow to pass this message on to your email list, and post on your Facebook page.  Let's generate as many letters as we can in the little time left.

Finally: The EIR COMMENT DEADLINE is Saturday, June 22, 2013. Even if Saturday somehow blows past and you can't meet the deadline, you should send in our form letter below.

Below is the cut-and-paste form letter to be emailed to the following addresses:         

BerreraD@email.laccd.edu

JustinCL@email.laccd.edu

Thayes@webtaha.com 

VDKCoalition@gmail.com

Board of Trustees
Los Angeles Community College District  
770 Wilshire Blvd.  
Los Angeles, CA 90017   

June, 2013

RE: “Interim Use” Project at Van de Kamps Campus—EIR Comments

Dear Board of Trustees:

I am writing to join my fellow neighbors and voters in Northeast Los Angeles in our demand that you end the illegal use of the $91 million Van de Kamps Community College Satellite Buildings for a charter high school and start offering community service courses, art, and other courses for adult educational purposes as outlined in the 2003 Van de Kamps operating plan. After all, this original economic feasibility plan was your justification for spending my tax dollars to build the Van de Kamps campus.

Myself and my neighbors, who are charged between $100-$200 per year on our tax bills for community college services, expect this Board to deliver the services promised to give young adults in our communities hope to improve themselves. The area around Van de Kamps has numerous high schools and no community college campus. My community college taxes should not be paying for a politically-favored charter high school. Does the LACCD Board of Trustees listen to its taxpayer/voters, or Richard Riordian/Eli Broad who are represented on the current charter school’s board of directors?

The improving state budget picture shows $3 billion more will be received this year than projected by the Governor. The expectation is that a great deal of the surplus will be invested in education—as it should. With signs of dramatic improvement of the state’s budget, which was your stated reason for failing to open Van de Kamps, why would you now consider continuing a 10-year “temporary” charter high school lease?  We need you to do your job.

The recent auto accident at San Fernando/Fletcher, where a charter high school student on a bike was severely injured illustrates this Board’s reckless behavior in putting a charter school at this location without conducting environmental studies for safety. As this student lies in a hospital bed recovering from his injuries, I wonder if this had to happen if you had conducted proper environmental review in 2009 when you hastily gave away our college campus. 

I leave it to others expert in environmental matters to comment on EIR technical issues. Put me on the list of people to receive all notices of hearing on this project.

Your Name:
Your Address:
Your Email Address:

Laura Gutierrez and Miki Jackson are activists for The Van de Kamps Coalition, a group of Northeast L.A. organizations and individuals. Gutierrez lives in Glassell Park, near the Van de Kamps building, and Jackson lives in Highland Park.