Private School

The Republican sponsor of a bill to provide tax breaks for parents of children in private schools asked Americans to tell President Clinton his opposition to the idea is wrongheaded. "With your help, we can convince him to put the interests of school kids ahead of the special interests that oppose parents' rights in schooling," Sen. Paul Coverdell of Georgia said Saturday in the GOP's weekly radio address.

A private Chatsworth elementary school has quietly begun an expansion that will eventually increase its student body by nearly half and add middle-school grades to its curriculum. The first middle-school students started school this week at the Sierra Canyon School on Independence Avenue, the first wave of students in an expansion that will eventually add 175 youngsters to the 400 who already attend in primary grades.

Westside Prep, an independent, private school in Culver City, is scheduled to start its first full year in September, with seats for 126 students in kindergarten to 12th grade. The school, which will have multiage learning groups, rather than traditional grade groupings, will emphasize role playing, data collection and analysis and other methods to develop thinking skills, said Headmaster Les Birdsall. "We want to attract high-performing students, but also . . .

A Sepulveda private school lost its 15-month-old license to barricade a public street after Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs accused the school of using the threat of drug trafficking as a ruse to gain parking spaces. By a 10-O vote, the council revoked a temporary permit given the Montclair College Preparatory School in December, 1988, to close off 110 feet of Langdon Avenue.

City officials and community and religious leaders will be present at a groundbreaking ceremony for the city's first preschool-through-seventh-grade private school at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday. St. Anne School, which will hold its first day of classes Sept. 17, will have 160 students. The school will initially operate from 18 portable classrooms, with permanent buildings going up on the 4.5-acre campus next year. So far, 12 teachers have been hired for the new school, at 25600 Rancho Niguel Road.

At least $250,000 in damage was sustained by a nationally recognized private school when an arsonist set a late-night fire to a campus annex, gutting one classroom and damaging other sections of the building, authorities said Friday. More than 44 firefighters battled the Thursday night blaze, which investigators say was deliberately set at three areas at the Fairmont Private Elementary School.

Sitting in his small, Spartan office, Jerome Porath, school superintendent for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, speaks with enthusiasm about the "endless possibilities" that passage of the school voucher initiative could bring: expansion, specialized education programs, more computers.

When school was supposed to open this year at Fairmont Private School, most of the student body didn't show up--because their classrooms had been ordered closed by the city. Just one day before classes were to have started, a city inspector found that the rooms had unsafe windows, an incomplete fire wall and no fire alarms. City officials also raised questions about fumes from a nearby beauty salon and about possible asbestos in the rooms.

This fall, Steve Shedd will plunk down nearly $10,000 to send his two oldest children to Santa Margarita High School in Rancho Santa Margarita. It will be quite a financial pinch for Shedd, particularly since he has never had to pay for his children's education before. But Shedd, an antiques dealer whose son and daughter were enrolled at University High School in Irvine, says the extra money he will have to dole out will be worth it.

President-elect Bill Clinton announced Tuesday that his 12-year-old daughter, Chelsea, will attend an exclusive private school in northwest Washington, calling the move a "family decision" and not a statement about the city's troubled public schools. "They didn't reject public schools," George Stephanopoulos, communications director for the Clinton transition, said. "The schools in the District of Columbia and across the country are good schools and Gov.