A decade behind schedule, a $350 million downtown (Los Angeles) high school finally opened on Wednesday after years of environmental, seismic and legal troubles. Much of the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, formerly called the Belmont Learning Center, already was constructed before fears grew about toxic gases rising from an old oil field upon which it was built. Construction was halted in 2000, then resumed in 2002 only to be thwarted again, this time by the discovery of an earthquake fault that crosses the site. The school became a symbol of bureaucratic ineptitude and wasted taxpayer money. The ensuing scandal swept a district superintendent and almost half the school board out of office.
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The school resembles a college campus, with several classroom buildings surrounding a landscaped courtyard. It boasts a gym with capacity to hold 3,000, a large dance studio with cushioned maple floors, 480 underground parking spaces--and a $17 million toxic gas mitigation system that costs $250,000 a year to operate. School grounds are dotted with tall light poles topped with mushroom-like caps--vents to let underground methane and hydrogen sulfide gases escape. Sensors monitor subterranean levels of the gases. When a gas buildup is detected, a blower is activated to push out the gases more quickly.
Students at the school choose among six smaller, autonomous "learning communities" that are focused around career themes, including languages, visual arts and humanities, business and finance, computer science and leadership. The Los Angeles Unified School District also is using the curriculum model at some large high schools.
"It's a paradigm shift," one administrator said. "It gives us a chance to personalize high school for the kids."
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