Meeting set on Shalimar Learning Center’s future

Jennifer Kho

COSTA MESA--The future of Shalimar Learning Center is up in the air,

and community leaders and residents will meet tonight to try to pin it

down.

The Orange County Congregation Community Organization, a countywide

church-based citizens group, will host a community meeting to discuss the

center’s Sept. 15 closure.

“We would like to heal the community,” said Paty Madueno, a

spokeswoman for St. Joachim Church and the citizens group. “It’s very

critical for our children to have a homework center. We need to put our

feelings aside, which is going to be very difficult. We need to do that

to focus our attention back on the children.”

The center shut down after children and parents protested the firing

of Maria Alvarez, a longtime staff member.

Randy Barth, volunteer chairman of Think Together, the organization

that oversees Shalimar and five other learning centers, said staff

members decided to close the center because they felt threatened by the

community.

Alvarez was fired because she didn’t follow a new schedule for the

tutoring program, Barth said.

The learning center rents three apartments for its program, which

serves about 300 children. Because of space limits, the program

established “teams” of students who were scheduled to come to the center

at different times.

Alvarez said she didn’t agree with the scheduling but did not refuse

to go along with it.

The citizens group originally conceived of the learning center and

pitched the idea as an outreach ministry to St. Andrew’s Presbyterian

Church of Newport Beach, St. Joachim Church in Costa Mesa and Women of

Vision.

Madueno said she hopes a community dialogue will anchor the learning

center back to its old location.

“We’re going back to the community to hear how the children feel and

the parents feel,” she said. The closing “was a very abrupt interruption

of their everyday lives, and everyone is grumbling about how the children

are going to do their homework. We need to at least open the center

again.”

Barth said the forum will give Think Together an opportunity to

present its side of the issue and determine the center’s future.

“We want to address it and move beyond it so we can talk about the

future of the center,” he said. “We need to talk about where we’re going.

We’ll let them vent a little and we’ll find out if they want [the center]

back. If so, we need to figure out where we are.”

FYI

* WHAT: Community forum on Shalimar Learning Center

* WHEN: 7 tonight

* WHERE: St. Joachim Church, 1964 Orange Ave., Costa Mesa

* INFORMATION: (949) 574-7400