Finding Belmont Truth

It’s a stunning admission: The Los Angeles Unified School District board is admitting it doesn’t know who or what to believe about the Belmont Learning Center, the nation’s most expensive high school. Taxpayers have invested nearly $200 million in the school, under construction west of downtown on an old oil field contaminated with potentially explosive methane gas and other chemicals.

The school board, six of whose seven members either voted against Belmont or were not on the board at the time, now says it cannot depend on conflicting reports from district staff and dueling experts. Clearly the school site is contaminated; the question is whether the methane gas threat can be mitigated to the point that students could safely attend school there.

While one consultant recommends making the school safe for students in the same way that Beverly Hills high school coexists with an operating oil well on its campus, another expert predicts brain damage or other health problems for students at the Belmont campus.

So, three years after Belmont was pushed through and approved, the current board says it wants to take one final look, in effect to see if this so-far disastrous project is salvageable. The board is creating an independent commission to get to the truth it apparently believes it is incapable of getting otherwise. This board is saddled with years of bad decisions made, we should add, by one current board member, Victoria Castro, based on misinformation put forward by staff, outsider lawyers and consultants paid by the school district, in a climate where political backscratching and labor concerns dominated a debate that should have focused solely on educational needs.

The best feature of the independent commission idea is that it is set up to make a recommendation to the board within 60 days. The worst part of what the board did was to think that it can or should control the free flow of information by imposing a gag order on members and district staff. After all the uninformed decisions this district has made, it’s incredible that the board thinks the public will be better served by prohibiting free speech about Belmont. The gag order can’t and won’t stand, which board President Genethia Hayes seemed to recognize in her comments to The Times on Wednesday night.

Getting to the truth of this mess, including the crucial cost-benefit analysis, is the goal of the independent commission. Its five members will include experts in law, the environment, public health and public works, as well as a member to represent the public, all of them independent from the many interests that hold sway in the district. Yet the school board approved the commission without discussing publicly how it would be funded, and without specific prior notice of its plans. Whether rookie mistake or intentional, details like this may work to undermine the public support the board needs.

The new panel should be guided by two questions: Will the new high school be safe? If so, at what cost today and in the future?

The fact-finding panel will be modeled after the Christopher Commission, which investigated the use of excessive force by the Los Angeles Police Department after the videotaped police beating of Rodney King. The Belmont Learning Center review commission would examine the cost, risks and scientific uncertainties of continuing the construction, as well as litigation and contracts involved in abandoning the project.

Parents in the Belmont area are justifiably impatient because they have been promised a new high school for 20 years, and students have been bused away from the crowded neighborhood for even longer.

The future of the Belmont Learning Center should hinge on what is best for the education, health and safety of students. So far, this district has failed them. It needs help to make a quick decision on Belmont. If the independent panel can truly do that, we say full speed ahead and the best of luck.