Discord builds over new downtown arts school

A tug of war erupted last week over L.A.'s new downtown arts high school, with some of its biggest supporters declaring that they had given up on the Los Angeles Unified School District and wanted the $242-million campus turned over to a charter school organization. In response to the critics, who included philanthropist Eli Broad, Supt. Ramon C. Cortines shot back: "There is not a for-sale sign on it."

The tension had been building for months, fueled in part by the district's plan to reserve most of the school's seats for students from the surrounding neighborhood rather than open it up to the most talented students districtwide. It bubbled over after two star principals from the East Coast turned down offers to take charge, leaving the school leaderless less than six months before it opens in September.

"This pace is so slow that we have lost total confidence that the district could open this school in September as a really excellent place for students," said Maria Casillas, president of Families in Schools, a nonprofit organization that encourages parental involvement in education. She is on the board of Discovering the Arts, an organization created to support the downtown arts school, and was on a design team for the school until she recently resigned in frustration.

Casillas and others have reached out to Judy Burton, the president and chief executive of the Alliance for College Ready Public Schools, a successful charter organization, in hopes that she could run the arts school with Board of Education approval. Burton, a former top official at L.A. Unified, said she would do so only in partnership with the district, and with the blessing of Cortines and board President Monica Garcia.

Cortines declined to comment on the idea, but he has said he does not want to turn the school over to a charter organization now, although he would consider letting staff convert it to a charter after it opens.

"Everybody sees the opportunity to have this beautiful building at no cost, and they want it," he said in an interview. The school, designed by the Austrian architectural firm of Coop Himmelblau, is both striking and filled with amenities that are rare for an L.A. public school, including a state-of-the-art theater, ceramics workshops, ceiling-hung projectors and track lighting.

Cortines complained about an e-mail he said he received from Broad that was disclosed in an article in the Downtown News. Cortines said Broad told him that if the district did not give up control, "the school is deemed to be mediocre and a failure."