CHARTER FIGHTS FOR SPACE FIVE LAUSD CAMPUSES SIT VACANT WHILE PUPILS ARE IN NEED.

Byline: NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN Staff Writer

WOODLAND HILLS -- Los Angeles Unified's highest-performing independent charter school is housed in a converted warehouse, with space for classrooms but no science labs.

Most students at Ivy Academia make do with a game of handball on the rough asphalt outside rather than spending recess on a real playground.

With limited facilities of their own, a waiting list of hundreds of students and parents clamoring for a high school, Ivy officials would like to lease one of five vacant LAUSD campuses in the area.

``These are sites with soccer fields and basketball courts, yet they're sitting there collecting dust,'' said Tatyana Berkovich, who founded Ivy Academia in 2003. ``It's sad because our kids are running around on converted parking lots, yet there are schools that are completely unoccupied and collecting dust.''

Ivy Academia's plea for facilities is one being voiced by many of the charter schools cropping up in the nation's second-largest school district. And it's one to which the district has responded clearly: We just don't have the space to give.

``What they're facing is reality. If the district had facilities available for charter schools in all areas, under district policy it would provide facilities to charter schools in all areas,'' said Gregory McNair, the district's chief administrator for charter schools.

``The reality is that facilities aren't available in all areas to provide to charter schools.''

McNair said the district is not being obstructionist, noting that it has helped 103 charters find space. The demand for the independent campuses is simply growing so quickly, he said, it's outstripping available space.

The district averages 25 to 30 applications annually for charter space, and has offered classroom space at a half-dozen public schools. But campus sites that the district does have available are not sites where charters want to locate, McNair said.

The three-year-old Synergy Charter Academy in South Los Angeles has been trying to lease an LAUSD facility, but until then has a joint-use agreement with St. Patrick Church.

Every Friday afternoon, the academy's kindergarten to fifth-grade teachers roll up the carpets, lock up students' belongings and rearrange the desks. They come in early every Monday to set everything back up again.

Location problems

While the district offered the academy use of a couple of classrooms at Mark Twain Middle School in West Los Angeles, academy officials rejected the plan, saying it was too far for their students, said Synergy co-founder Meg Palisoc.

``There's no way our little kindergarten babies would be able to get on a bus every morning and go all the way to the Westside on a campus with a middle school,'' Palisoc said. ``It just was not an ideal situation.''

McNair said Ivy officials rejected the district's offer of four classrooms at Columbus Middle School in Canoga Park.

He said the five nearby schools that have been closed for years due to declining enrollment -- Collins Street, Oso Avenue, Platt Ranch, Highlander Street and Enadia Way -- would cost millions of dollars to prepare for students.

``I have not heard from the larger charter community that they would support using large amounts of the charter bond dollars to benefit individual schools,'' McNair said.

Currently there's $84 million in the charter bond pot and the district is trying to leverage those funds with private money for more construction.

The LAUSD also is looking at a program in which the district would purchase sites that it would then lease to charter schools to build facilities. The district has received 28 applications for that program.

Missed opportunities

Another compromise would be using charter money to build small learning communities on new district campuses, McNair said.

But charter leaders say the current situation has been exacerbated by a district that has missed opportunities to benefit both existing charter schools and traditional public school students.

After eight years of trying to get district help, the nine-year-old Watts Learning Center this year purchased the church where it had leased space since 2000.

With 242 students in four mobile classroom units, seven permanent classrooms and a small playground, officials will spend about $10 million to turn the church into a school.

``From day one our biggest challenge has been to find a home,'' said Watts' CEO Gene Fisher. ``We followed all the rules and submitted all the applications for the property and they sent a letter that if we can't find anything, they'd be happy to take their students back.''

But what has really irritated charter officials is that the LAUSD ultimately decided to build a school blocks away from the Watts Learning Center -- without asking Watts whether it wanted part of the new building.

``It seems that they would have said here's a school with a principal and teachers in place, books already there, and they would invite us to take that over and then it would be another opportunity to say we could have a great school, But, frankly, they did not do that,'' Fisher said.

Facilities and access to facilities is the single biggest barrier to the growth of charter schools, said Caprice Young, head of the California Charter Schools Association.

Young said she's hopeful new LAUSD Superintendent David L. Brewer III will help break the logjam.

``They're not complying with the law to provide facilities for charter school students and we are hopeful the new superintendent will understand his responsibility under the law,'' she said.

Young said recent conversations with district officials indicate the LAUSD is willing to take the problem seriously.

But she notes it's a policy issue that could be rectified quickly by the school board.

``This is something the school board can solve tomorrow by providing facilities or allowing us to use bond money to build facilities at a lower cost,'' she said.

School board President Marlene Canter said the district is adhering to its policy to give charters space, but has limited supply.

``The issue is we have to be able to look to the future in terms of charters in how we better integrate what charters offer to the schools and how we can continue forward in our long-term building program,'' Canter said.

Need for partnership

``My goal is to continue to provide quality education to every child and to integrate charters into that mission and keep on track with the goals and trajectories the district has to achieve.''

Penny Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Southern California and director of its Center on Educational Governance, said the charter problem in Los Angeles is not unique.

The federal government is investing about $4 million to set up a national resource center to look at charter facilities as well as governance, she said.

And a broader issue is whether districts and charters can develop a stronger partnership.

``There's so much controversy that the districts are still not considering the charter schools, are helping them do their job, so instead of being complementary and trying to partner and work together, you get lines drawn in the sand,'' she said.

``If they focus on the commonalities between the two organizations, they will realize if they were to partner, they'd be able to accomplish more together than separately. I think some districts are at that place, but many are not.''

naush.boghossian(at)dailynews.com

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