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The California Coastal Commission has just voted to approve a controversial 810-student school on former military property in southern San Pedro.
Los Angeles Unified School District in December approved the campus, which was opposed by a number of local residents.
Officials have said the campus will house two magnet programs and act as an "annex" to overcrowded San Pedro High School.
The 8-3 vote was the final approval the district was seeking. I'll have a full story shortly.
A new school that is planned for Wilmington will be named for labor leader Harry Bridges, after a vote by the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education today.
The campus, which will house 1,278 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, will be called the Harry Bridges Span School.
Bridges, who died in 1990, was the longtime leader and founding president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
"He was a labor leader, a community leader, a fighter for our brothers and sisters," said Board member Richard Vladovic.
Councilwoman Janice Hahn, Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, a rep from state Sen. Jenny Oropeza's office, UTLA President A.J. Duffy and others spoke in support of the naming.
The school will be located on a controversial site -- so-called "Site F" -- in central Wilmington and will replace several businesses and homes. It's a full block bound by Avalon Boulevard, Broad Avenue, L and M streets.
The campus is set to be completed by the 2012 school year.
Los Angeles Unified and Carson city officials will grin and pose with shovels tomorrow at the groundbreaking for South Region High School No. 4.
The 13.7-acre campus, on the Long Beach side of the Carson border, is set to accommodate 1,809 students when complete. It's going to cost about $145 million.
(Long Beach is continuing its legal battle against the district over the campus.)
The event is at 10 a.m. at the site, Carson Street and Santa Fe Avenue. Bring your hard hat!
The Carson City Council recently passed a resolution recommending that the campus be named for LAPD SWAT Officer Randal Simmons, who died while on duty in February. Simmons, a Rancho Palos Verdes resident, did a lot of work with youth in Carson.
The LAUSD Board of Education will vote on the naming Nov. 25.
On Friday afternoon, LAUSD released its draft environmental impact report for the district's proposed high school on 39 acres at the former Army installation at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro. The school is officially known, for now, as South Region High School No. 15.
(The facilities department's laschools.org website, where the report is available, was down when I posted this ... I'll add a link when it's back up.) It's here.
This document, with design details and traffic plans and the like, is the one that many San Pedro LAUSD-watchers have been waiting for -- especially those folks in the residential Palisades area the largely surrounds the site. I haven't had time to give it more than a cursory glance yet, but I did notice there was a plan for 50-foot windmills on the north part of the site. I wonder how that will go over with neighbors.
District officials said they've tried their darnedest to respond to the concerns of area residents with the new plans. David Kooper and Jacob Haik -- chief and deputy chief of staff, respectively, to district 7 board member Richard Vladovic -- met with members of NOISE (the group of residents who've opposed the project) on Thursday, they said. I'm eager to hear reaction to the report from NOISE members and others.
(A story ran in today's paper about last week's meeting at which the district discussed contamination and cleanup of the site.)
Comments will be accepted on the DEIR through Oct. 10.
