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RIPOSTE
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DING DONG SCHOOL
(June 11, 2003)
It must be the chairs---that's all I can come
up with. Have you seen them? They are grand, plush, high-backed, brown leather affairs.
You disappear in them. I'll bet you can swing your legs, like a little kid.
I blame the chairs for the Belmont
"Learning Center." I think the whole reason for this debacle is that L.A. Board
of Education members really, really like to sit in those comfy thrones, and hem
and haw, and ponder, and feel really, really important. I think the chairs put
them in a quasi-dream state, and make them stupid. It's heroin for the hindquarters,
which, of course, raises the question of where their brains reside.
I mean, it can't be that the Board
is naturally this stupid, right?
Belmont "Learning Center," therefore,
must be the product of a kind of daydream, a hallucination, a mid-afternoon reverie, a
half-conscious idea born of numb buns.
How else do you explain spending
$175 million to build a "showcase" school on top of great pustules of methane
and hydrogen gases---and one earthquake fault? How else do you explain stopping the
construction about two-thirds of the way through, studying the gas and quake problems for three
years, then deciding nothing was wrong in the first place, and comitting $111 million
more to finish it? How else do you explain construction that spans almost seven years over
two centuries---with four more to go?
It's the chairs. Has to be.
Pro-Belmont School Board
members Marlene Canter, Genethia Hudley-Hayes, Mike Lansing and Jose Huizar---you've all
got bats in your Belmont. (Probably literally, considering how long the place has sat,
abandoned.) You're rowing without a boat, playing tiddly without the winks, crackering
without your jacks. Your dog is off the leash.
Get out of those chairs now, before you start
drooling and asking for a Busy Board.
Oh, yes, you say, L.A. County District Attorney
Steve Cooley spent two full years investigating Belmont for environmental violations, and
didn't file a single charge. (Which makes you wonder what kind of chair he is sitting in.)
Oh yes, you say, the methane and hydrogen
"pockets" will be "capped and vented." Heh, heh---you're full of
methane. As if anybody knows exactly how to map out and control such things. The only gas
you people can control is that which you expell into those fancy saddles. (Of course, one
can see how a sudden subterranean eruption of poison gas might be useful in a science or
geology class. . .especially if someone lights a match.)
Oh, yes, you say, razing and
rebuilding two of Belmont's brand-new (never used) buildings so that they are the legally
required fifty feet from an earthquake fault will make them safe! Yessir, just
move your classroom fifty feet from an earthquake fault---that's from here to the
bathroom, folks---and the kiddies have nothing to worry about! Bring on that 7.0!
Oh, yes, you say, cap it off with a really,
really nice park with a lake full of duckies, and Belmont Learning Center will become
the education showpiece of all Southern California. Never mind that the cinderblock palace
looks more like Belmont Correctional Facility, and that any park in that area will not
only attract lots of duckies---but also lots of Homies. Yes, local wildlife includes the
Armed Gangbanger, the Ubiquitous Crackhead and the Redoubtable Mainliner. Many are sure to
migrate from nearby Skid Row, Ramparts, and MacArthur Park. Hey, boys and girls, want
to earn some extra cash after school?
I've heard all the arguments---that
the park will have good security, that L.A. has as many earthquake faults as I have
creases under my eyes; that we are all walking on cracked eggshells around here. But do
your 'rithmetic, Board of Ed.---methane plus hydrogen plus earthquake fault plus gangboys
plus crackheads equals. . .bad place! At least. . .bad place for high school!
And it equals real, real bad place for
$286 million high school that will house only 2,600 students---1,900 fewer than originally
planned! For that money, LAUSD could have built two high schools and one middle school, by
its own estimate.
Which leads to this thought: imagine having
used that $286 million to make district-wide improvements. Right, Marlene, Genethia, Mike,
and Jose--- consider that. You could have gone from school to school, in person, to find
out what they really, really need. Maybe a new library here, a new gym there, new
gym equipment here, functional air conditioning there, toilets that flush here, textbooks
there, new coat of paint. . .maybe even some (gasp) bonuses for teachers.
Of course, I realize this would mean
vacating those plush Alice-in-Wonderland recliners (they do have a vibrating feature,
right?), but the walking would do you good. You know what walking does, don't you? It
circulates the blood out of your legs and back up to your brains. This can help you do
something called "thinking."
But if you had been able to do that, you would
never have approved of Belmont in the first place. You certainly would have abandoned the
project when construction was first halted, if not torn it down altogether. Or maybe you
would have come up with an alternative idea---perhaps a rehab center and
get-back-on-your-feet job-training complex for the thousand and thousands of homeless
people sleeping on the streets of Skid Row. (They have a lot of experience with methane
and earthquakes.) Funny how L.A. just ignores this grotesque problem while it builds that
goofy new $274 million Disney Hall, the $200 million Catholic Reichstag, and $286 million
Ding Dong School. . .
But then, all the people making all these
decisions about L.A. are peering at reality through a hazy dreamland produced by leather
and half-digested lunch. Consider the statement by Board of Education freshman Huizar, who
is credited with reviving Belmont:
"When this school opens,
I'm going to feel very proud that it only came about because I decided to do the right
thing and fight regardless of the political hurdles."
Spoken like a man in a comfortable chair.
