Charter Middle School Won't Be Housed at Westminster Next Year

The LAUSD has withdrawn its allocation of classroom space at Westminster Avenue Elementary School for a sixth grade next year that would have been run by charter school group Green Dot Public Schools. An alternative site for the sixth grade will be chosen by the district, but it may not be in Venice.

An application for a Venice-area charter middle school was approved by the district for the 2011-2012 school year, and under Proposition 39, LAUSD is required to offer free space at a local school. A new potential location has been identified, but not finalized, according to Sharon Delugach, chief of staff for school board member Steve Zimmer.

"It's all been sort of in flux," Delugach said. A letter to the new location will be sent out April 1, the district's deadline for finding a place.

"We will absolutely be opening a middle school in the fall," said Douglas Weston, director of communications and campaigns for Green Dot, and a resident and parent in Venice. "We're very clear that we want to open a school in Venice."

"We have an obligation to the many, many parents and community members who have fought with us over the years to provide choice in Venice," Weston said.

The district has a legal obligation because it approved the middle school charter. The school is set to begin in September with approximately 200 sixth-grade students, selected through a weighted lottery. Local students will be given preference. The following year, the school will serve sixth and seventh graders, and in 2013 it will serve sixth-eighth graders, and about 600 students.

In early February, to news that eight classrooms and an administrative space at Westminster would be occupied by the initial sixth grade.

"Parents and teachers of Westminster are concerned that their children are at risk," Sue Kaplan, who volunteers at the school, said at a public meeting in February.

Kaplan then introduced a successful measure at the Venice Neighborhood Council in March that recommended "the evaluation and allocation of rooms at Westminster Elementary School and other similarly affected schools not adversely impact the students and teachers in these neighborhood schools; the importance of serving protected classes of children be upheld; and the integrity of neighborhood school be prioritized." 

According to LAUSD officials, sharing campuses is usually met with public concern. However, at public meetings in February and March, Zimmer praised Green Dot's previous co-locations and stressed that they had been good "guests" at other schools.