Case Study:  Pacific 57th & Crenshaw LLC

Site: 5701-5749 Crenshaw Blvd. Neighborhood: Crenshaw, South Los Angeles Seats Created: 600 Tenants: Inner City Education Foundation’s View Park Preparatory Accelerated Charter Middle and High School

Description: In the fall of 2005, Pacific opened a state-of-the-art campus near the intersection of Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue to serve View Park Preparatory Accelerated Middle School and High School. View Park is managed by the Inner City Education Foundation, one of the preeminent operators of charter schools in California.

The Crenshaw community is located in the heart of South Los Angeles. South Los Angeles is generally defined by the I-10 freeway to the north, the I-105 to the south, the I-110 to the east, and the I-405 and La Cienega Boulevard to the west. In addition to Crenshaw, South Los Angeles is comprised of communities as diverse as Baldwin Hills, Inglewood, West Adams, Lennox, and University Park. They are considered some of the most underserved areas in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). In general, schools in these neighborhoods:

• Perform at the lowest academic levels. All 16 of the middle schools and high schools in South Los Angeles are recognized as Program Improvement (PI) schools by the State of California -- they have not achieved adequate yearly progress for at least three consecutive years;
• Overall, less than 60% of 9th grade students go on to graduate from high school;
• Over 40% of the schools operate on a full-year calendar as a result of chronic overcrowding;
• The average elementary school enrolls almost 1,000 students and was first opened in 1921. The average middle school enrolls almost 2,000 students and was first opened in 1928. The average high school enrolls more than 2,700 students and was first opened in 1936.

The new View Park Middle and High School campus most directly serves the needs of families currently enrolled in three chronically underperforming LAUSD campuses:

In stark contract, the View Park Prep schools have produced exemplary academic results during their first five years of operation. Our new campus will allow them to expand their mission of serving the students of the Crenshaw community:

The two-story campus consists of two main buildings and was built from the ground up using the latest in pre-fabricated building design and construction techniques. It includes classrooms, physical education space, and administrative offices on roughly 1.94 acres. A portion of the furniture, fixtures, and equipment was provided under LAUSD’s Measure K Charter School Expansion Program.

The cost of the entire project, including all required furniture, fixtures, and equipment, was approximately $10.158 million — or roughly $16,900 to create each new charter school seat. New middle and high school seats created by LAUSD, in comparison, frequently cost 4 to 5 times as much.

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