LAUSD scraps plan to build $30-million home for popular language immersion program in Mar Vista
By Gary Walker
Mark Twain Middle School won’t be hosting elementary-level immersion students next year
A decision last week by LAUSD Supt. Ramon Cortines to halt construction of a $30-million addition to the Mark Twain Middle School campus in Mar Vista has been met with elation by residents opposed to the project but drawn the ire of families enrolled in one of the Westside’s most popular public education initiatives.
On May 27, Cortines announced that he was rescinding a decision last year by the LAUSD board to build a two-story, 33,000-square-foot classroom building at Mark Twain for the expanding Mandarin Chinese dual-language immersion program currently based at Broadway Elementary School in Venice.
The plan sought to connect the program’s elementary-level students with the middle school’s world language magnet as part of LAUSD board member Steven Zimmer’s language immersion pipeline.
“I believe that Broadway should continue to offer a Mandarin foreign language immersion program for the long-term, it should not be relocated and the construction at Mark Twain should not move forward,” Cortines wrote in a letter to Broadway parents and Mar Vista residents.
The letter cites fierce local opposition to the project, including concerns about increased traffic and loss of open space.
Officials expect to house the Mandarin immersion students once bound for Mark Twain in bungalows on the Broadway Elementary campus in order to accommodate growth of Broadway’s Spanish immersion program.
Lily Chan, who has a son attending Mandarin immersion second-grade classes and a daughter heading into the program at the kindergarten level this fall, called Cortines’ decision “gut-wrenching.”
“We put our faith as a community in LAUSD and their decision to transition us to Mark Twain. We stood by their plan, even through months of public bullying by Mar Vista residents and unhappy Beethoven parents who unjustifiably felt that our gain equaled their loss. Our parents, staff, teachers, and principal have worked for countless hours figuring out a way to easily transition our program through the two years of existing on a split campus. Our faith in LAUSD has been destroyed, and our hard work has been for naught,” said Chan, a co-president of the Mandarin parent council.
Chan feels that Cortines caved to pressure from a grassroots opposition group called Stop the Commuter School and the West Mar Vista Homeowners Association, a campaign that saw some critics directing catcalls and insults toward Mandarin immersion parents at community meetings.
In addition to quality of life concerns, some opponents cast the Mandarin immersion parents as outsiders who were displacing area youth from their neighborhood school.
Zimmer, who represents Westside neighborhoods, was a strong supporter of moving Mandarin immersion students to Mark Twain.
“The last time that I looked I am the policymaker. And as the policy maker here, I’m going to push the administration to address this educational imperative,” Zimmer said. “If we lose the chance now to establish these changes rooted in instructional change, that change will eventually happen, but the collateral damage will be incalculable.”
Cortines is also reducing the number of planned Mandarin immersion kindergarten classes from four to two.
“This reversal significantly hinders our growth and our chance of creating a strong middle school pathway. Hell hath no fury like a parent whose children might be forced to stay on an unsafe, overcrowded campus,” said Mandarin immersion parent Lolly Ward.
Zimmer says the fight isn’t over.
“I expect a redesign of the proposed construction can address the aforementioned issues and that it remains the most appropriate instructional plan. If it cannot, I expect the superintendent to present an alternative plan to move forward that honors all the LAUSD programs in question and the families who chose these programs. For public education to work we must have dynamic choices for families, and we must be willing to invest in those choices,” Zimmer wrote in a letter to constituents last week.
Mar Vista resident Saeed Ali, concerned about traffic as well as spending taxpayer dollars on new construction while many Westside classrooms remain under-enrolled, praised Cortines.
“Dr. Cortines has made the right decision after a comprehensive review of analyses from LAUSD experts in instruction, administration, finance, facilities and environmental management as well as the views of parents, teachers, school principals and community,” he said.
gary@argonautnews.com
Do we really need a Mandarin immersion program???? Why is this not the question. Please can our kids just at least get a decent grasp of English??
We are the defenders of democracy. We are the warriors of true diversity, and equality. When we saw that our local schools were on the brink of being exploited by an invasive plan that had received $30 million dollars in an eye blink, we stood up for what we believe in. Stop the commuter school stood up against Steve Zimmer, a group of parents, and we defeated them in a civil democratic way. In a democratic society, such as America, we have the right to organize the way Stop commuter school has done. The fight is not over Steve Zimmer. The people in our community are not bullies. We are warriors of change. And we will never give up our fight to save our community from people like you who seek to exploit it. And in the the end, our group will prevail and bring true diversity, and equality to the Westside, Los Angeles, and the world.
Good try, Mr. Walker! Typically the ‘”reporter” who must have cobbled up this take from a desk w/a phone, not by really doing real street reporting, inspecting for himself the site and the reason why the residents are so reluctant , offers plenty of space to one parent named Lily Chan, who is not identified as a resident of Mar- Vista, he does not explain how close her residence is to the school and the adjacent streets. Is she going to be impacted by the additional traffic? I doubt if the eminent “reporter” took the time to stand outside the school between 07:30-08:30 and between 14:00-16:00 during the week, with the understanding that some 500-or so more vehicles will be passing by. Certainly he does not refer to his own personal findings, the entire take is based on letters and what few people told him. How would the reporter like to breathe the smoke emitted from all these passing cars? This kind of journalism peddled across the country by half baked – reporters who furnish a big platforms to party commissars like Mr. Zimmer, a so called “teacher” in one of the most radical “colleges” in the nation, Occidental College, in Eagle Rock, (also known as the Moscow of Southern Califonria) where he has plenty of time to hatch his sinister plot to deprive us of our quality of life. Because Mr. Zimmer, who plays the shady character in this China Town Story acts like your typical pushy local unscrupulous politician who sneers at the conclusions arrived by by the experienced and esteemed Mr. Cortines, that his findings mean nothing (he says so in his letter) and he is determined to undo everything , thus putting the entire district in turmoil, pauperizing the residents with legal fees, for his own craven purposes. Mr. Zimmer behaves like a real agitator, applying the brass knuckle and squalid methods of Chicago prophet to various urban ‘activists” – Mr. Saul Alinsky , RIP, 1973, (Chicago, Rules For Radicals) who lectured to a generation of urban anarchists how to hurl unfounded calumnies, smear their opponents, casting doubts on their integrity, ridiculing the very voters that pay high taxes which pay his undeserving salary, purely to advance his so called “vision” (in his letter- “vision” is mentioned 5 times,the word I – 27 times) , all packed in a letter to the concerned residents – those who he is mocking & disparaging, casting them as sinister racists! This odious letter and other classified documents that surfaced prove once again that he is no friend of the neighborhood and his methods are only used in furtherance of his shadowy patrons, that the “reporter” cannot be bothered to investigate, too much work for Mr. Walker. In my opinion, it is a good idea to prepare young kids to speak Mandarin, but while there are hundreds of empty classes in the area, why impose on the residents near the Mark Twain Middle school with more traffic, more dirty air, more noise, less open space? Just so that Mr. Zimmer will be able to cut a coupon with his patrons, and move up in the political ladder? Is this what Zimmer calls representing he district? Really? Perhaps he is not aware of the rotten ways in which “Council-woman” Ms. Ruth Gallanter also “representing” our area while walking her tiny Poodle along the fence of the school sold her vote for the huge expansion in Playa Vista – selling the Wetlands for handful of dollars? Mr. Zimmer, it is not too late to recover from your obsession, do you really want to be remembered as the one antagonist so many people detested?
This articles leaves out the fact that Cortines also decided to cut enrollment for the MI program in 2016-17 from 4 incoming kinder classes to 2 classes because there is not sufficient space on the Broadway campus. Thanks Mar Vista “stop commuter school” forces, Marcus Wagner and Saeed Ali! And thanks to those parents in the MI program who also reached across the isle and supported Marcus Wagner’s fight to stop the new school project. Not only did you stop the school construction, you overshot the target and cut our future enrollment in half. Great result NIMBY naysayers! Great way to support public education in ESC West. Just brilliant!
Don’t believe everything you read! I was at the community meetings held about about this project. I and many others in the community of Mar Vista are aghast at being vilified and portrayed as bullies with regards to the process.
On the contrary we feel it was US that was being pushed around and bullied by the proponents of this plan into accepting many things we just don’t feel are either needed or warranted at MT or our neighborhood .
We are of course open to discovering alternatives but initially we were neither consulted or asked what our opinion was. Hence the strong reaction of residents
For us to be portrayed like this is a gross distortion of the facts and a really shameful way for the proponents of the original plan to express their disappointment, Especially since the process of opposition was carried out in a very thoughtful and fair manner. In the end LAUSD heard the voices of the people of Mar Vista.
We are the defenders of democracy. We are the warriors of true diversity, and equality. When we saw that our local schools were on the brink of being exploited by an invasive plan that had received $30 million dollars in an eye blink, we stood up for what we believe in. Stop the commuter school stood up against Steve Zimmer, a group of parents, and we defeated them in a civil democratic way. In a democratic society, such as America, we have the right to organize the way Stop commuter school has done.
The fight is not over Steve Zimmer. The people in our community are not bullies. We are warriors of change. And we will never give up our fight to save our community from people like you who seek to exploit it. And in the the end, our group will prevail and bring true diversity, and equality to the Westside, Los Angeles, and the world.
Most of us in the community don’t support this program at all. This is all about gentrification, not change. Most of us are not elite, or can barely afford to live in the gentrified westside. And now our corrupt Mayor is getting the westside gentry all gaga over a drought tolerant global oasis. And with that comes the so called mandarin programs vision to save our schools. It takes more than just a mandarin program to save our schools. Not everyone is going bonkers over globalism. I want my daughters to embrace true diversity, and equality. Marcus Wagner’s cartoon saws it all. And to Steve Zimmer: The people are the policy makers! We are the game changers! And we all stand for democracy in the land of the free.
I’m a 23-year Mar Vista resident, but as a teacher, parent, and grandparent volunteer, I have been involved on a daily basis for almost four decades with Culver City language Immersion, the first in the nation. So it is with understanding and sympathy that I urge Broadway parents to be as forgiving and generous with their neighbors as they can be. The ONLY downside to immersion I’ve ever found is the uninformed and parochial resentment of some community members.
I can understand if spending more than $1,000,000 in construction costs per classroom seems outrageous, but how can ANYONE fail to see the logic that having a complete Kindergarten through High School education within a few blocks would reduce overall traffic in West LA? If the complete K-High School Mandarin program was in that Mar Vista/Venice border location, then the same family would be taking multiple kids to basically one location instead of the current likelihood of driving (for many such as myself driving across Mar Vista right past Mark Twain on my way to Broadway) to one location for kids in elementary school and then to some other location (Mark Twain, Venice High or other West LA private school, if a incoming Kindergarten population of 4 classes is not maintained and there are not enough students to make a decent Mandarin Middle/High School program within LAUSD) for older kids in the family. By the way, I heard that the person who was really heading the anti Mandarin Immersion at Mark Twain movement and proclaimed that we’d be bringing traffic Armageddon is moving out of Mar Vista… hopefully stopping the dedicated Mandarin Immersion school will help him get a good price for his home!
How very sad for the children of Mar Vista. Their school is currently ranked by the LA Times as “2 out of 10” for academic performance, with a mere 1/3 of students scoring “proficient” in math and English. There is a reason their classrooms are under-enrolled: it’s because none of the affluent residents of Mar Vista will send their children there.
A rising tide lifts all boats. The resources, energy, and increased enrollment that the MI program could have brought to this abysmal school could have transformed it, just like it turned around the performance of all students at Broadway (which has had a 140 point increase in API since the MI program started). Even occasional Mandarin lessons for those not enrolled in the full MI program would have been a priceless educational gift (given that the “window” for language acquisition in the brain starts closing at around middle school age) — helping Mark Twain students’ cognitive development, and who knows, perhaps improving their future job prospects.
How sad that their parents care more about traffic than about their childrens’ educational futures.
Bullies? We are anything but bullies. You are saying a small group of people was able to bully officials? Your mandarin supporters got $30 million dollars overnight, and we took it away in an eye blink. We didn’t bully anyone. You think we have super natural powers to defend our community. I know that must be true because you act like you just saw Super Man. Your mouths dropped like you just lost $30 million dollars. We learned through people like Martin Luther King Jr., and even Muhammad Ali never to give up. Like Ali’s quote, yes, we are the greatest! The greatest democracy to ever exist.