Story Created:
Feb 13, 2009 at 2:33 PM PST
Story Updated:
Feb 13, 2009 at 2:33 PM PST
LOS ANGELES — The $232 million arts school set to open near downtown next fall, still lacks a principal and a curriculum.
Central High School No. 9 is set to open at 450 S. Grand Ave. on the site of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s former headquarters, but enrollment will be limited to 350 students from outside the neighborhood in its first year, then 500 students per year, the Los Angeles Times reported. The 1,700-seat school’s enrollment will be limited mostly to students living near the campus, The Times said.
“This school is built to build the potential that exists within this community, in which we have thousands of very talented students but who lack the social capital and the access to quality arts training,” Richard Alonzo, the local district superintendent, told The Times.
Most of the students will come from the traditionally poor in the Pico-Union district, and Alonzo said the school might discourage the most talented students from outside the area, lest they hog the spotlight.
With a 950-seat theater, dance studios and state-of-the-art classrooms, the school is believed to be second most expensive public high school ever built after the Los Angeles Unified’s boondoggle formerly known as the Belmont High, which is just six blocks away.
An executive director for the arts school was hired but quit, and now Alonzo is interviewing candidates for principal.
“I’m concerned — I will use that word,” said Ramon Cortines, the district’s incoming superintendent.
Cortines said any school needs at least a year of preparation to open successfully, and a specialty arts school may need more.
Alonzo said he was close to choosing a principal.
Limiting enrollment to students from the surrounding neighborhoods will give the school its own identity, Alonzo said. Plus, he said, the school district needs to make up for decades of neglect in the immigrant-dense area just west of downtown.
The LAUSD has performing arts programs as part of its magnet system, and those schools are required to take students without regard to talent. The L.A. County High School for the Arts, on the other hand, requires auditions or portfolios of student work.
Alonzo said the new school will steer a middle course, with students required to get a recommendation from a teacher and to demonstrate their interest in attending. They will not, however, be required to demonstrate artistic ability, since many students in the neighborhood never had the opportunity to study an art form.
But Ariceli Ruano, chief executive of a foundation that helps Latino children and an active member of the arts school advisory board, said the selection process isn’t clear.
“Is it first-come, first-served?” she asked. “I don’t know. And with the local students, there’s no application that’s been developed that I’ve seen. … I don’t really understand, and if I don’t understand, I don’t think it will be very clear to parents.”
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