NORTHEAST LOS ANGELES ACTION ALERT TO SUPPORTERS OF THE VAN DE KAMPS COALITION
The Trustees of Los Angeles Community College District (“LACCD”) have negotiated a backroom deal to hand over most of the space at the $61 million Van de Kamps Los Angeles City College (“LACC”) Satellite Campus to a politically-connected non-union charter school. Instead of desperately need adult educational opportunities promised to our community for a decade, the LACCD Board of Trustees is about to consider approval of a proposal to give away our nearly completed community college campus to a private charter high school that will unfairly compete with Ribet Academy and the new public high school within a half-mile of the VDK Campus. LACCD administrators have been working on this new “vision” with absolutely no notice or engagement of the affected community.
This coming Wednesday, July 15, 2009, at its Board of Trustees meeting, local Northeast LACCD trustees Mona Field, Sylvia Scott-Hayes, and Kerry Candaele will lead an effort to get newly sworn LACCD trustees Tina Park and Miguel Santiago to go along with this multi-million dollar sweetheart deal that has received NO public review and for which LACCD is withholding public records from the VDK Coalition to prevent the public from knowing the details until after the handover is done.
The VDK Coalition’s research suggests that funding to open the Satellite Campus exists within the LACCD, but certain partisans on the LACC faculty have co-opted LACCD administrators to cannibalize operating funds that ought go to the VDK Campus and to instead preserve sacred cows at the City College main campus.
If the politically-connected charter school is handed control over our VDK Campus next Wednesday afternoon, the VDK Coalition has serious doubts the VDK Campus will EVER be implemented by LACCD for the adult education facility promised to Northeast Los Angeles. This is a serious breach of more than a decade of commitments by the Trustees of LACCD, including Mona Field, Sylvia Scott-Hayes, and Kerry Candaele.
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE?LACCD trustees and administrators are RUSHING to seal this deal before the public finds out. The VDK Coalition learned of this proposed Board action on Friday, July 10, 2009. We need your help to STOP this rushed decision making of the LACCD and demand a public process before long-term and irrevocable commitments are made.
• Please open your e-mail address book and forward this alert to your friends, community leaders, and those with e-mail lists throughout Los Angeles.
• Use the e-mail addresses below and edit our suggested text to express your opinion. Send the e-mail to the list below.
• Make sure your objections to this ill-conceived backroom deal goes into the public record by also faxing your printed e-mail to the LACCD Board Secretary to: Carol Justiniano, Executive Secretary to the Board of Trustees at fax number (213) 891-2035. This will assure a record of your objection to this rush to a decision with no public review.
• If you can attend the LACCD Board meeting on Wednesday, July 15, 2009, Trustee Mona Field has assured the VDK Coalition in writing that the LACCD Board will not consider the proposal until 3:30 p.m.
LACCD Board of Trustees Meeting
Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 3:30 p.m.
LACCD Educational Services Center Board Room
770 Wilshire Blvd, First Floor
(Corner of Wilshire Blvd and Flower Street, one block from the 7th Street Metro Center Red Line Station)
Los Angeles, California 90017
IF YOU CAN ATTEND, PLEASE DO SO TO STOP THIS ARROGANT ACTION OF OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS.
SAMPLE E-MAIL LETTER FOR YOU TO E-MAIL AND FAXClick here to send email to all addresses listed below
Or Cut and paste these e-mail addresses into your “TO” box:
justincl@laccd.edu, eisenblh@email.laccd.edu, gcolombo@email.laccd.edu, fieldm@laccd.edu, sscotth@laccd.edu, assemblymember.deleon@assembly.ca.gov, alana.yanez@asm.ca.gov, assemblymember.portantino@assembly.ca.gov, elizabeth.garcia@asm.ca.gov, mayor@lacity.org, daniel.andalon@lacity.org, councilmember.reyes@lacity.org, suzanne.e.jimenez@lacity.org, councilmember.garcetti@lacity.org, mitch.ofarrell@lacity.org, councilmember.huizar@lacity.org, zenay.loera@lacity.org, vdkcoalition@gmail.com
Cut, paste and edit has you see fit this sample letter:
VIA E-MAIL and FAX (213) 891-2035
Board of Trustees
c/o Board Secretary, Carol Justiniano
Los Angeles Community College District
770 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90017
July 13, 2009
Dear Board of Trustees:
I am writing to express my opposition to an ill-conceived rush to decision regarding the future of the Los Angeles City College Satellite Campus at Van de Kamps (“VDK Campus”). I understand that there is an item on the July 15, 2009 agenda of the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees meeting to consider a lease of a large portion of the VDK Campus to a non-union charter high school. LACCD refuses to release the terms of the agreement to the public prior to the meeting.I know that the community, working through the actions of the VDK Coalition, has worked for a decade to save the historic Van de Kamps Bakery from possible demolition. The LACCD has invested $61 million dollars of taxpayer Proposition A/AA bond funds to reuse the former bakery as an exciting satellite campus. The VDK Coalition and the entire Northeast community coalesced around this vision of making adult education opportunities more available to transit-dependent residents of the Northeast area. The LACCD’s own study identified a viable market of such students and need for these adult education opportunities.
The VDK Coalition’s research shows that LACCD Trustees authorized the expenditure of $285,000 of construction bond funds to pay for a consultant to prepare the LACCD’s application to the State Chancellor’s Office to seek “Center Status” for the VDK Campus. Such a status would have made the VDK Campus eligible for enhanced operational funding from the State as it is available. For reasons not released to the public, sometime between last July and January of this year, someone at LACCD made a decision to throw the $285,000 study in the toilet and claim that Los Angeles City College has no operating funds set aside to open a campus it has spent $61 million of taxpayer monies building over the past two years. The contention that LACC has “no plan or funding” to operate the VDK Campus strains credibility and calls into question whether the LACCD is being managed in accordance with the accreditation standards of the Accrediting Commission for Junior and Community Colleges.In an effort to review the management decisions for LACCD that led to the abrupt and non-public decision of LACC to transfer control of the VDK Campus to the administration of LACCD, the VDK Coalition filed a California Public Records Request. In its initial response, the LACCD stated it would not turn over e-mail records of trustees and employees that document the conduct of official business and that it would take “months” to produce the requested documents. These actions suggest that the management of LACCD has something to hide. The wording of the May 24, 2009 report of the Accrediting Commission suggests that its evaluation team that just visited Los Angeles City College was not told of the January 2009 decision to turn over the VDK Campus to LACCD administration.
The public has not been able to verify the actions of LACCD administrators and so far, there is no evidence that the decision to hand the VDK Campus over to a non-union charter high school was done with any competitive bidding or competing proposals. Additionally, there is a serious question whether bond authorized for adult education can be used to build a building leased to a charter high school.While I understand that LACCD administrators may think they are acting in the public interest to immediately lease out the VDK Campus, I object in the strongest terms to all of these extremely significant and controversial decisions being made with absolutely no transparency to the public. It may be in the public interest to complete the VDK Campus building and, even if it cannot open immediately as a satellite campus, to look much more closely at the resources of the LACC and LACCD to get this campus up and operating. As the Accrediting Commission noted, the LACCD has a 10% reserve fund which is 7% higher than the minimum 3% required by state law. I am concerned that internal politics, and not the current state budget woes, may be responsible for this recent claim that Los Angeles City College just “cannot find the funds” to open operations at the VDK Campus.
Finally, I am concerned that Trustee Mona Field, who works for the Glendale Community College as an instructor, has a serious conflict of interest in voting to take actions that could thwart development of the VDK Campus as a community college. Ms. Field and her faculty colleagues at Glendale Community College may perceive the VDK Campus as “competition” with Glendale, but the LACCD’s study shows a viable market in the Northeast area. Ms. Field should have long ago recused herself from any involvement regarding the future of the VDK Campus given her competing interests in its future.For all of these reasons, I join the VDK Coalition in calling up the LACCD Trustees to not approve any lease of the VDK Campus to the non-union charter high school until the new members of the LACCD Board and the public has been given the opportunity to fully review the viable options and TOGETHER chart a course for the future of the VDK Satellite Campus in Northeast Los Angeles.
Most sincerely,
· In 1999, the Van de Kamps Coalition, a coalition of nearly 25 community organizations in Northeast Los Angeles, spearheaded the campaign to save the beloved historic Dutch Revival Van de Kamps Bakery building on Fletcher Drive at San Fernando Road. The Coalition together with State Senator Richard Polanco saved the building, secured 3 million dollars in seed money, and obtained an agreement from Los Angeles City College (“LACC”), part of the Los Angeles Community College District (“LACCD”), to construct a satellite campus at that site.
· By 2003, voters approved Propositions A & AA, bond measures for LACCD. The propositions provided funds to start construction and a budget of $61 million dollars were allocated in 2003 for the Van de Kamps North East campus. The targeted date of opening was the fall of 2005. LACCD internal politics caused delay after delay. Project managers, accounting firms and consultants continued collecting their fees, that along with escalating costs essentially wasted taxpayers dollars. One building on the VDK campus, slated to be a community theater, was cut. The project eventually had another promised opening date of Fall/2007, and then delayed to Fall/2009.
· For several years, a Northeast Satellite Campus Steering Committee, which included community members and staff of local elected officials, met regularly with LACCD administrators. LACCD halted these meetings with the community in summer of 2007. Construction started in fall of 2007. Essential to the community was LACCD’s commitment to provide adult education in Northeast Los Angeles: post high school credit courses in AA degree programs and transfers to four-year educational institutions. Resources such as community meeting rooms, a wellness center, job development and a child developmental center were also part of the VDK campus plan.
· With no consultation with the community or the VDK Coalition, in April of 2009, LACC announced that it would not open the VDK Campus as promised and revealed that its Shared Governance Committee had voted in January 2009 to turn over operations of the site to LACCD administration to “manage” for the next 5 years. In turn, the LACCD administration announced it would lease out the VDK campus to make money for LACCD instead of opening a community college. In the space of a few months, LACC and the administrators of LACCD have gone from planning an opening of a community college campus built with $61 million of taxpayer monies to a scheme to deprive the Northeast of an adult education campus. The timing could not be worse with a recession and so many low-income students in Northeast Los Angeles needing adult education to train or re-train for the new economy.
ADDITIONAL FAX NUMBERS SHOULD YOU HAVE TIME TO FAXASSEMBLYMEMBER KEVIN DE LEON: FAX: (323) 225-4500
ASSEMBLYMEMBER ANTHONY PORTANTINO: FAX: (626) 577-2868
MAYOR ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: FAX: (213) 978-0650
COUNCILMEMBER ED REYES: FAX: (213) 485-8908
COUNCIL PRESIDENT ERIC GARCETTI: FAX :(323)-478-1296
COUNCILMEMBER JOSE HUIZAR: FAX: (213) 485-8788