TEACHERS NERVOUS ABOUT OCCUPATIONAL CENTER'S FUTURE HIGH SCHOOL PLANNED ON ADULT PROGRAMS' LONGTIME SITE.

Byline: Jennifer Radcliffe Staff Writer

WOODLAND HILLS - Inside classrooms at the West Valley Occupational Center, senior citizens swap notes with high school dropouts, former merchant marines and Iranian doctors.

For four decades, the 19-acre campus at Victory Boulevard and Winnetka Avenue has taught San Fernando Valley residents to upholster cars, build houses, rescue drowning children, speak English and to use a host of other skills that help them land jobs.

Now, a proposal by the Los Angeles Unified School District to build an 800-seat high school on the property - which it owns - has some West Valley teachers worried that the popular adult programs will be displaced or overshadowed.

Despite assurances from L.A. Unified that the center will not be affected, some West Valley educators don't trust the district to keep its word.

``This is a magical place,'' said instructor Lou DeCarlo, the school's United Teachers Los Angeles representative. ``We don't want to lose the chemistry of it. The world has so little magic these days.''

LAUSD leaders said the proposal for the small high school is in the preliminary stages. They envision a partnership that benefits both teens and adults by bringing better facilities and newer technology to the campus. They insist adult programs would not be displaced.

``This is a great opportunity for us to leverage our resources,'' said Candice Lee, a spokeswoman for the LAUSD Division of Adult and Career Education. ``One needs to keep an open mind and see the opportunities.''

State law provides LAUSD $55 million a year to operate its 10 occupational centers - an extra incentive to keep West Valley and other centers open, Lee said.

Fears that West Valley's programs would eventually be sidelined by the new high school were fueled by a memo that surfaced last November from a Cleveland High School administrator that incorrectly stated that the district planned to raze the West Valley center.

In addition, talks over the last year have included building a 1,600-seat high school at the site - double the size of the current proposal.

``It seems to me that this is a very quiet, sneaky takeover eventually of this occupational center,'' said Bob Myers, a 73-year-old instructor. ``It would be like a cancer taking over.''

West Valley - which includes a maze of bungalow buildings and parking lots - became a target earlier this year after LAUSD officials promised irate neighbors that the district would try to use its own land to build the high school, rather than seize their homes.

``We made a commitment to solve this with district-owned land,'' said John Creer, the LAUSD's development manager for the San Fernando Valley.

While LAUSD supports adding a high school to the West Valley Occupational Center, Creer said they will move forward slowly so that they can address all concerns. District leaders and West Valley officials will meet in early November to discuss what the new campus might look like.

``In this particular endeavor, we are physically marrying up, in a very formal way, two divisions of an agency that has never been done before,'' Creer said. ``There's some uncertainty about this.''

West Valley Principal Maureen Jensen said she's excited about the possibilities, and thinks that most of her 130-plus employees will also support the high school addition.

``High school students need options,'' she said. ``Many students are not interested in college or do not have the ability.''

The center has many vacancies in the afternoon, when high school kids would be attending vocational classes, she said.

But West Valley educators still believe that adding too many teens could endanger the success the center already has had.

Currently, about 15,500 students a year attend the West Valley Occupational Center. Nearly 2,000 of those are high school students seeking vocational skills and another 300 are teens who would have otherwise dropped out of school.

For others, like 55-year-old Rudolph Ball, West Valley provides an inexpensive opportunity to train for a second career. Ball, a merchant marine for nearly 20 years, pays about $40 for his culinary arts class and is considering starting a catering company.

``It's totally awesome,'' he said. ``I came here embarrassed that I was too old to go to school. ... But they give me a will to keep going on.''

Jennifer Radcliffe, [phone]

jennifer.radcliffe(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Instructor Mike McLouth looks over boy work in progress on a 1972 Cutlass owned by student Guillermo Gurrola.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer