By TAMAR GALATZAN, LAUSD Board member
Printed in the North Valley Community News March 2009

Among those of us who live in the Valley, there is a well-founded suspicion that other parts of the vast city that is Los Angeles are indifferent to our needs. For several decades, Valley residents have, with good reason, believed that their neighborhoods are underserved in such critical areas as law enforcement and street maintenance.

Yet it is not always true that the Valley gets short-changed. There are occasions when elected officials representing communities across the city recognize the importance of supporting a project that benefits primarily Valley families.

This past January, the LAUSD Board of Education voted unanimously to allocate $77 million in bond money for construction of a new K-8 school in Porter Ranch. Construction of the school, which is located in my board district, is expected to be completed by 2012.

I have no doubts whatsoever that there is a desperate need for this school – and position with which the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council and Los Angeles City Councilman Greig Smith agree. We uniformly recognize it is wrong for parents living in the community to have to send their kids to LAUSD schools several miles away or pay for private schools that are not as crowded.

When I was elected to the Board in May 2007, I told the community that it was one of my top priorities to deliver a new school to Porter Ranch. Over the past 18 months, we have attended several meetings with Councilman Smith’s staff and community leaders during which the design for the school and other key issues were addressed.

From the perspective of the residents of the Porter Ranch, everything looked good. Still, I had lingering concerns about how the vote would go.

Having lived in the Valley almost my entire life, I am well aware that there are certain perceptions about our communities – rich, privileged, entirely self-sufficient – that can be a deterrent to receiving needed government support. With this view in mind, would the Board decide a school for Porter Ranch was not essential, especially given pressing needs elsewhere?

To make the strongest possible case, my office invited three speakers from the PRNC – Becky Leveque, Mel Mitchell and Wendy Moore – along with Mitch Englander, chief of staff to Councilman Smith. We knew from experience that each of these individuals could offer vivid testimony to the longstanding desire of the community to have its own, state-of-the-art school.

As it happened, we could not have wished for a better group of presenters. They spoke passionately about not only the significance of the school, but also their commitment to LAUSD and its educational mission. Their remarks won over the Board, which enthusiastically voted to allocate the funds.

The Valley/downtown divide, though real, is not as impenetrable as the Berlin Wall. With the right strategy, a good project, and a strong level of support, Valley constituents can affect change for the better. Just ask the people of Porter Ranch.