School Closures

A proposal to close two schools in the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District to help balance an $88-million budget has been shelved under pressure from parents and three school board members. As part of a $2.2-million package of spending cuts, the Board of Education last week considered closing 325-student Wedgeworth Elementary School and 500-student Orange Grove Middle School to save $500,000. A large number of parents quickly voiced outrage at the proposal. As a result, schools Supt.

Fourteen teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District filed a suit last week in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking the immediate closure of pollution-plagued Tweedy Elementary School in South Gate. Claiming that tenants of an adjacent industrial park present a continuing health threat to the staff and students of the school, the plaintiffs also requested that the industries named in the suit pay the cost of relocating the school. Among the industries cited is the Purex Corp.

Inglewood High School shut down for the day and sent its 2,100 students home Friday after what appeared to be a pipe bomb was found on the roof over a campus walkway, officials said. A 16-year-old student who led authorities to the device was questioned and his home was searched, but no explosives were found there. The sheriff's bomb squad found the device suspicious enough to detonate it at the scene with other explosives, but authorities said it was not determined what was inside the device.

Re "Newfound Damage Shuts School Gym," Dec. 10. In response to the confusion regarding the closing of our gym, I would like to set the story straight. I was the person who called Los Angeles Unified School District maintenance to repair some loose acoustical tiles. When I was told of a possible problem with the ceiling, I notified FEMA, immediately closed the gym and canceled all permits. When the hidden damage was found, the gym was officially closed by LAUSD. I arranged for the use of Chancellor Hall at Chatsworth High School to house our winter concert, our most pressing event before vacation.

The state Court of Appeal has upheld a lower court ruling that backed the Santa Monica-Malibu Board of Education's February decision to close Madison Elementary School. A group of parents and students filed suit after the board voted 4 to 3 to close Madison because of money shortages and an enrollment that declined from 419 students in the 1980-81 school year to 288 when school closed this year.

The financially pinched school district, now grappling with a recommendation to close up to five schools, "virtually ignored" a similar proposal eight years ago. Some members of a 1980 task force that recommended closing schools say the current fiscal crisis probably would not have been averted if the district had acted then.

About 200 parents watched in helpless outrage Thursday night as the Fountain Valley School District Board of Trustees voted to close the city's oldest elementary school because of low enrollment. In an emotionally charged meeting that lasted for two hours, about a dozen parents spoke against the proposed closure of Fountain Valley Elementary School--and threatened legal action to keep it open. Despite the opposition, the board voted, 4-1, to close the school.

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District's Board of Trustees will act next month on the district superintendent's recommendation to convert Costa Mesa High School into a 7th- through 12th-grade school and close its feeder school, Davis Intermediate, by September, 1987. Supt. John Nicoll said his recommendation was based on falling enrollment at the intermediate school and the success of a similar conversion this year at Corona del Mar High.

Mayor Lois Shade is questioning the validity of an agreement requiring a Glendora industrial plant next to a San Dimas school to move some of its operations in light of suggestions that the school be closed. Plato Products Inc. agreed in January to move its metal-plating operations out of its Glendora plant after noxious acetic acid fumes escaped through an open door at the plant, causing 100 children at Arma J. Shull School to become ill.

A Cudahy elementary school should be ordered closed because of a mysterious, oily substance seeping up through asphalt on a closed area of the school's playground, a Los Angeles city schools official recommended Tuesday. Board of Education member Leticia Quezada, who represents the Cudahy area in southeast Los Angeles County, made the recommendation for the Park Avenue School during an evening meeting of an environmental task force investigating the seepage.