CSUN MAY ADD HIGH SCHOOL LAUSD OFFICIALS PLAN JOINT EFFORT.

Byline: David R. Baker Staff Writer

NORTHRIDGE - Officials of Los Angeles' space-starved school district plan to build an 800-student high school at California State University, Northridge, that would double as an incubator for CSUN's teacher-training program, they said Thursday.

The high school's students, drawn from overcrowded campuses nearby, would play sports on the university's athletic fields, study in its million-volume library and in some cases take college-level classes with the university's students.

``It really fits so many of our needs,'' said school board member Julie Korenstein, who has worked for years to create a joint venture with California State University, Northridge. ``It's the right thing to do, the right time to do it, and it's going to be a wonderful addition to L.A. Unified.''

Officials said the new school wouldn't solve LAUSD's classroom shortage. Five additional comprehensive high schools would have to be built in the San Fernando Valley.

But the new school could serve as a model for joint ventures with other local universities. And its curriculum, still under development, would encourage high school students to pursue teaching, Korenstein said.

The project still must win the approval of the school board, the California State University system's trustees and the California Legislature. University and district officials on Thursday predicted success, saying both sides would benefit.

``It's a matching of our strength with theirs,'' said CSUN's interim president, Louanne Kennedy. ``We're thrilled with this arrangement.''

District officials do not yet have a cost estimate for building the 32- classroom school, now just being called New Valley Senior High School No. 1. A school that size typically costs about $20 million to build, they said.

In a land swap, the LAUSD would give up a former elementary school it already owns on the CSUN campus in return for five acres of undeveloped land next to the athletic fields along Zelzah Avenue.

Prairie Street Elementary, at the corner of Prairie and Zelzah, closed in 1984 as the pool of young children in the neighborhood shrank. Located near the heart of the university's campus, the school grounds were ideal for student parking, and CSUN soon leased a portion of the site from the district.

About eight years ago, Korenstein began talking with university officials about reopening the elementary school in cooperation with the large teacher-training program at CSUN. While those plans never developed, the discussion last year shifted to building a high school elsewhere on the campus and letting CSUN use the entire Prairie site for parking.

No new public high school has been built in the district since Kennedy High was completed in 1971. As a result, 4,325 students now cram into Monroe High School, a few miles east of the university. Monroe will be 3,000 seats short by 2006, said Assistant Superintendent Gordon Wohlers.

More students are also pouring into Granada Hills High School, just a few blocks north of CSUN. The school has 3,387 students now and could soon be forced to switch to a multitrack, year-round schedule to fit them all into classrooms.

The new school would not prevent year-round scheduling at Granada Hills High, Wohlers said.

``The priority's got to go to relieving the schools already on year-round schedules,'' he said. ``It wouldn't be fair to keep busing kids out of Monroe when we're building this school nearby for Granada.''

But the 800 seats would help, district officials said, and Korenstein said she sees it as highly significant that the project could be a model for working with the area's universities.

``This is something really unique,'' she said. ``We don't have a high school on a university campus anywhere else in L.A. Unified. Everybody will be looking closely at this.''

For the university, the new school would give student teachers a perfect place to learn their craft in real classrooms. And a new crop of CSUN students might be recruited right on campus, Kennedy said.

``We really hope they'll chose us as their university,'' she said.

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Map: Proposed high school