District Decides Not to Move Adult School

A widely criticized plan to convert a bustling adult school near downtown into a replacement for the abandoned Belmont Learning Complex died Thursday in a Los Angeles Board of Education committee.

The Facilities Committee voted 3-0 against relocating about 10,000 students, mostly immigrants, from Evans Community Adult School to a Wilshire Boulevard office building.

“They really realized what an unwise decision this would have been,” said Evans teacher Yvonne Nishio. “They chose to keep a good program where it is.”

Nishio said she ran the three blocks from district headquarters to carry the news to the campus at Cesar Chavez Avenue and Figueroa Street, where thousands were attending afternoon classes.

“Everyone is still celebrating,” she said.

Evans was one of eight sites recommended by district chief operating officer Howard Miller to provide replacement classrooms for the half-finished Belmont. The board voted Jan. 25 to kill the project because of concern over the hazards of methane and hydrogen sulfide at the site, a former oil field.

Miller, who had urged the board to scrap Belmont, faces intense pressure to come up with alternative sites for the 4,000 to 5,000 students who would have attended it. Many are now being bused to other neighborhoods.

But Miller’s March 2 proposal provoked an immediate reaction from Evans students, teachers and alumni. Thousands marched on district headquarters and rallied at board meetings in protest.

Newspapers and community groups also jumped in, extolling Evans as an important symbol of acculturation for the tens of thousands of immigrants who have learned English there.

Still, officials were reluctant to abandon the Evans conversion, because it offered the only opportunity to open new high school classrooms as early as September.

At Tuesday’s board meeting, however, Miller acknowledged that the tide was turning, saying Evans had dropped to the bottom of his priority list.

“I think there was an awareness that this was a totally successful L.A. Unified symbol,” said David Tokofsky, chairman of the Facilities Committee. “If the Belmont Learning Complex has symbolized the dysfunction of the system, Evans symbolized the success of the system.”

The committee also rejected a downtown auto dealership as a school site because of environmental problems found there.

If accepted, the other six sites will be considered by the full board April 11.

Miller said he will add more prospective sites to ensure that there are enough seats to replace Belmont.

Nishio, the Evans teacher, said the three-week ordeal has added a dimension to the school’s mystique: a triumph of American democracy.

“It’s kind of like a civics lesson about what to do when something needs to be addressed,” she said.