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GUEST: Marcos McPeek-Villatoro, novelist and poet and former KPFK programmer of Shelf Life

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has proposed to tear down twenty-two homes in a Van Nuys neighborhood to make way for the construction of Elementary School 14. This new school would be part of LAUSD’s larger school-construction program that has built 65 schools since 2000 and has plans to build 80 more. To obtain the land needed for construction, LAUSD has exercised its power of eminent domain to force home-owners into selling their property to the city. However, residents currently living on the proposed site are organizing to save their community. Opponents of the proposed construction argue that LAUSD’s use of eminent domain is both unethical and unnecessary. The plans for building do not take into account neither the rights of the home-owners nor does it recognize the irreparable damage it would have on a very close-knit L.A. community. Currently, residents are searching for an alternative site for the new elementary school. Last November’s Proposition 90, on Government Acquisition and Regulation of Private Property in California, failed by 48-52%. Meanwhile, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the League of California Cities are backing separate initiatives that would curb eminent domain abuses on the June 2008 ballot.

Read Marcos McPeek-Villatoro’s editorial in the LA Times here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-villatoro1apr01,0,6748390.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary

Contact LAUSD Board members:

Jon Lauritzen: jon.lauritzen@lausd.net, work: 213-241-6386, fax: 213-241-8979.

Julie Korenstein: julie.korenstein@lausd.net, work: 213-241-6388, fax: 213-241-8451