Negotiations between Renaissance Academy and Greg Schem, landlord of the 881 Alma Real building, came to a halt this week when the school’s board authorized the filing of a civil lawsuit against Village Real Estate, LLC, the building’s owner. Schem told the Palisadian-Post Wednesday morning that he had not yet received a copy of the lawsuit filed by the new charter high school, which has an enrollment of more than 300 students in grades 9-12. In a six-hour board meeting November 10, Renaissance Academy board members decided that no further ‘good-faith settlement proposals’ on their part could be made to resolve the ongoing landlord-tenant dispute, which began during the first week of classes in September when Schem, in a surprise move, terminated the school’s lease effective June 16, 2005. ‘Although we very much wanted to avoid filing suit, and would still prefer to resolve the dispute through negotiation, we feel we have a very strong case, and are therefore confident we will receive a good outcome in the courts,’ the RA board wrote in a press release posted on the school’s Web site (www.rahigh.org). Bill Bryan, president of the RA board and a school parent, told the Post Tuesday: ‘We’ve done all the begging that there is to do. The lawsuit speaks for itself.’ The board’s decision to file a lawsuit came after it received a settlement proposal from Schem in late October. ‘We proposed a compromise on how we’d work together with [the school] and the City [of Los Angeles] to up the number of students on the terrace level to 150,’ Schem said Tuesday. To date, the L.A. Department of Building and Safety has officially restricted the ground level for administration and counseling, and stipulated that only 90 students occupy the four permitted classrooms on the lower terrace level. According to Bryan, Schem’s proposal ‘didn’t really invite a counter. In order to agree to the proposal, we’d have to agree to using less space than we are now.’ Since receiving clearance from the L.A. Fire Department in October, Renaissance has been allowing 150 students to attend classes on the terrace level. Those students have been using seven of the eight classrooms on that level. Independent study groups of about 10 students have been using the ground level. Other RA students have been attending classes at alternate Palisades locations, including the YMCA board room, a private home, Aldersgate Retreat Center on Haverford (which is owned by the United Methodist Church) and, occasionally, at Mort’s Oak Room. The press release announcing the lawsuit this week stated ‘that the strains of running a high school at multiple locations’in particular the extra challenges faced by our wonderful teachers, and the substantial extra rental costs’have become more than we can bear.’ ‘We feel we’ve been denied the fair use of the space we’ve rented,’ Bryan reiterated to the Post. ‘The necessity [for filing a lawsuit] is to attempt to get more use of the space through June.’ In addition to obtaining instructional use of the ground-level space, Renaissance wants approval to complete renovations in a second chunk of space on the terrace level, about 1,000 square feet in suite T-9, where construction was halted in its initial stages when black mold was discovered. ‘We began submitting plans to finish the space and [the landlord] has refused them,’ Bryan said. ‘T-9 is an unusable shell at the moment, but it could be [finished] easily in a week.’ Renaissance also needs the landlord’s approval to complete installation of the life safety upgrades, which would allow for more students to occupy the school’s space. ‘We have still not received approval,’ Bryan said. According to Schem, ‘The school continues to violate numerous Building and Safety codes and we’re puzzled as to why no enforcement action has taken place.’ While Schem said Wednesday morning that he had not seen the aforementioned lawsuit, he confirmed that he had not filed a suit against Renaissance, though he did not dismiss the option. ‘We can take [RA] to court and we’ll undoubtedly win,’ he said. Meanwhile, the Pacific Palisades Community Council subcommittee formed during the council’s September 23 meeting to address concerns regarding Renaissance, is ‘dormant,’ according to council vice-chairman Kurt Toppel. The committee met three times, but didn’t reach any specific recommendations. ‘It’s not the Community Council’s job to do what the school should do,’ Toppel said Tuesday. Bryan said, ‘The subcommittee proved to be an unwieldy forum for addressing the issues, and we decided one-on-one discussion between the council and the school would be more productive.’

A year ago, Paul Revere sixth grader Carlos Macario was killed in the crosswalk as he ran to catch the westbound MTA bus at the intersection of Sunset and Allenford. The tragedy was a grim reminder that this corner’a half block from the middle school that serves 2,190 sixth, seventh and eighth graders’is part of an overwhelming onslaught of traffic and congestion that plagues the neighborhood every school day. Now, a year later, little has changed. Traffic still backs up on Sunset in the morning and at dismissal, cars clog Allenford’the only access road to the school’and neighbors still complain about their inability to get in and out of their streets. Immediately after the accident last October, Revere principal Art Copper met with LAUSD representatives and West L.A. traffic officials to address the chaotic traffic situation that exists around the school at arrival and dismissal times. A number of suggestions to tame the traffic nightmare and remedy the dangerous situation were discussed, including strict enforcement of No Parking signs on Allenford, letters to parents urging carpooling, posting School Zone signs and conducting a Department of Transportation survey to determine the volume of traffic on Sunset. According to Mo Blorfroshan, DOT engineer, a three-day 24-hour traffic count conducted in June 2004 showed almost the exact same volume (25,170 vehicles) as the three-day count taken in November 2003 (25,242). Meanwhile a parent transportation committee, now under the leadership of Revere parent Sue Pascoe, has pursued ways to increase bus transportation to and from school, particularly for Palisades students, most of whom arrive or depart by private car. Although there are 22 LAUSD ‘yellow’ buses serving the school, these are designated for magnet school students, students who come from schools that are overcrowded, and those who are not otherwise served by transportation, as in the case of students who live in Topanga Canyon. At the afternoon dismissal, there is public bus service for homebound students. Three MTA ‘school trippers’ stop on Allenford; two travel westbound on Sunset to Marquez, and one travels eastbound toward Beverly Hills. Some students use the MTA commuter buses that travel east and west on Sunset in the afternoon, particularly if they have missed the school tripper or if those buses are overcrowded. Since the opening of Revere in 1955, housing has steadily grown in the Palisades, including the significant population in the Highlands, nearly 10 miles from the school. ‘There was never an adequate projection done about the number of students being added to both Paul Revere and Marquez Elementary,’ according to Pascoe. The school district stopped providing resident bus service in 1979, as a consequence of Proposition 13, but has reserved $16.7 million of its annual budget for Other Transportation Students, Pascoe told the Palisadian-Post. Antonio Rodriguez, LAUSD branch director of transportation, says that a few schools fall under the distance and hazard category, ‘in cases where there are no sidewalks on part of the walking route assigned to children, in which case the busing becomes necessary because of a safety issue.’ Pascoe cited the students who live near Chautauqua as qualifying for bus service under this category. ‘For most of the route [from Chautauqua to Allenford], the sidewalk is either a trail, a part of a sidewalk or a sidewalk that is directly next to the road, functioning as a shoulder for the road,’ she said. ‘And there are blind curves all along Sunset.’ In researching ways to provide more buses for students and thereby reduce the passenger car crush on Allenford, Pascoe investigated the idea of piggybacking on school bus service to and from Palisades High School. She soon discovered that the contract service, First Student Buses, could not provide a PaliHi bus early enough to accommodate Paul Revere students. They could provide an additional bus to Paul Revere, paid for by parents at a cost of $600 a year’an annual fee Revere booster club thought was ‘prohibitive for many families.’ Pascoe then contacted LAUSD to see if the district would contract their buses that arrive at PaliHi before 7:15 a.m. for Paul Revere, but ‘the district refuses to contract those buses out to parent groups because as a public entity they they would lose their tax and insurance status,’ she said. Having reached an impasse in trying to remedy the traffic crisis at Revere, Pascoe is appealing to the community to encourage school board member Marlene Canter to support busing students from the Palisades and Brentwood to Paul Revere. ‘Paul Revere is a school that is entitled to local busing because of the safety issue,’ Pascoe said.

Brian Clark, who has leased the historic gas station in Santa Monica Canyon for the last nine years, found himself locked out on Tuesday morning. A chain link fence surrounded the station and Clark was told by Monica Queen, who is selling the property, that he could call and make an appointment to collect his personal belongings. Even though Queen had given him notice weeks ago that the property had been sold and that the escrow could not close until he vacated the premises, Clark said he plans to file an unlawful eviction action. ‘They have no right to lock me out,’ Clark said. ‘I never thought it would come to this.’ Within an hour of receiving Queen’s permission to enter the site, Clark had several workers on the lot stripping the contents of the station, taking away the vintage Coke machines, the neon lights, and the restored gas pumps’all of which he planned to store until a settlement can be reached. As one of Clark’s workers was unscrewing the antique ‘Canyon Gas’ street sign, he was interrupted by Queen, who said the sign belonged to her. Clark, who had painstakingly restored the station, explained that ‘all the fixtures here belong to me. She said she was planning to donate all of my fixtures to the Petersen Car Museum. But how can she donate what isn’t hers? The building and the gas tanks under the ground are what belong to her.’ After being on the market for over a year, the property, which includes the service station on Entrada Drive, went into escrow in early October. Also included in the sale is a 100-year-old house, one of the last remaining homes of the Marquez family, the original owners of the Rancho Boca de Santa Monica land grant. The Palisadian-Post was unable to confirm whether escrow actually closed on Monday, as was planned according to Clark. Whoever is buying the 17,000-sq.-ft. lot is believed to be paying close to the $2.3-million asking price. ‘I’ll have to get back to you,’ is all Queen, who lives in the two-bedroom house located behind the gas station, would say when asked by the Post about the status of the sale, which appears related to settling the estate of Queen’s mother, Angelina Marquez Olivera, who died in 2002. While the property is zoned R-1, there has been a conditional use permit since 1925 for the gas station to operate in this residential neighborhood. It is leased for $2,000 a month. Tuesday’s confrontation between Clark and Queen exacerbated a game of cat and mouse which has been going on for the last two months. The wrangling began in September when Clark, along with local realtor Frank Langen, tried to purchase the property on behalf of the community and was rebuffed. ‘I feel betrayed,’ Clark said at the time. ‘We made them a full-price offer. I thought we had a deal. They seemed really happy about the idea of preserving the gas station and maybe turning the house into a museum. Then two days later there are workers here taking soil samples to see if the gas tanks are leaking. That’s how I found out they had sold the property to someone else.’ Now, in a last-ditch attempt to save the station, the Santa Monica Canyon Civic Association (SMCCA), which represents neighboring residents, has applied to the L.A. Cultural Heritage Commission to have the station, the oldest full-service gas station in Los Angeles, declared a Historic-Cultural monument. The hearing is set for next Wednesday. If SMCCA’s proposal is approved the new owner would not be allowed to demolish, alter or move the station for one year, buying Clark and the community more time. ‘It’s a race to the end,’ said Clark, who has had a lease on the distinctive orange-and-white station since 1996. ‘If escrow closes this week, before the hearing, there is nothing to prevent the new owner from obtaining a permit and tearing the station down. All we can do is hope that doesn’t happen.’ For now, the fixtures of the vintage station are in a storage facility. While acknowledging that if and when the station were to reopen there would still be zoning and variance issues to be resolved, Clark is sure a community buy-out of the property is the best way to go. ‘We can put everything back the way it was. But we need everyone to show up at the hearing on Wednesday,’ Clark said. (Editor’s note: The L.A. Cultural Heritage Commission hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, November 17 at 10 a.m. at City Hall, 200 Spring Street.)

Merle Price, former principal at Palisades High and a 1993 Citizen of the Year, received the second annual Lori Petrick Excellence in Education Award from the Palisades Charter Schools Foundation last Sunday. ”Presented at an invitational tea at the home of Daniel and Rachel Lerner in Mandeville Canyon, the award honors academic professionals who instill in students the love of learning, or who generate excitement for public education in the lives of students as well as parents. ”The first award was given posthumously in 2003 to Palisadian Lori Petrick, an inspiring teacher at Marquez Elementary and Palisades Elementary for more than 25 years. ”Price, who retired in July as LAUSD’S deputy superintendent for instructional services (K-12) was honored for his role as ‘a visionary leader’ and his ‘extraordinary contributions and dedication to the public schools in our community’ the past 12 years. ”Pam Bruns, an activist in Palisades schools since 1979, gave a brief history of events that led local parents, teachers and administrators to establish the Palisades Education Complex in 1988 (an organization which later became the Palisades Charter Schools Foundation). ”’We knew we were facing common problems and we felt that we could strengthen our voice in dealing with LAUSD and the state if we joined together in working on these issues and possible solutions,’ Bruns said. ‘We also knew we needed more local control and independence in our ability to make on-site decisions.’ ”When the state legislature passed charter school legislation in 1992, this coincided with Price’s arrival at PaliHi, and his leadership proved pivotal as Palisades schools acquired charter status in 1993. ”’After my first meeting with Merle,’ Bruns said, ‘I felt like all our years of hard work and pursuing seemingly insurmountable goals suddenly seemed possible. Suddenly we had somebody with extraordinary intellect and vision, a leader with the skills to bring a diverse community together for a common cause’the independence offered by charter schools. ”’We knew that for any meaningful reform to happen in the Palisades Complex, the leader of our flagship school’PaliHi’had to be a strong leader, had to be someone who was courageous, had to be somebody who was visionary, and had to be somebody willing to be out in front of everything. Merle was that person.’ ”Bruns concluded, ‘If we could figure out some way to clone Merle Price, that’s the best thing we could do for public education.’ ”Paula Leonhauser, a member of the Foundation Board, continued her praise of the honoree, noting that she had met with Price periodically over the years in her various educational capacities. ”’Once Merle became local superintendent for District D, after supervising the Hamilton/ Palisades Cluster, he was quickly snatched up by [LAUSD Superintendent] Roy Romer. Why?’ asked Leonhauser. ‘Because, in addition to being a great leader that you love to work for’even if it’s for free!’he is insightful, informed, intelligent, fair, extremely hard working and humble. You know just by talking to him that he is deeply dedicated to every single child in the city.’ ” A glass plaque was presented to Price, who commented that ‘receiving an award named after a teacher is probably the most significant kind of award for me.’ He was a teacher for 18 years early in his career and enjoyed going back to those roots as a principal, occasionally filling in as a substitute science teacher at Pali. ”’My favorite moment as a principal was actually a classroom experience,’ Price said. ‘I remember I went in one particular day and I found out from the kids that they had been working on photosynthesis, so I got involved; I asked them some questions, I cleared up some of their misconceptions and we worked through a whole lesson on the details of photosynthesis. Just as the class was about to close, I asked the students if they had any more questions. One young man in the back of the class raised his hand and said, ‘I don’t have a question. I just want to say something. You must have been a teacher. I thought you were just a principal’I didn’t know you really knew something.’ ” At Sunday’s tea, Price went on speak about the remarkable growth of charter schools in California. ‘In 1992, there were 68 charter schools serving 24,000 students in California. Currently there are 537 schools with over 180,000 students.’ ”He continued, ‘Charter schools are generally smaller, more user-friendly, less bureaucratic, and lend themselves to more innovation. They tend to encourage more participation at local levels and encourage different styles of learning. The major challenge for start-up charters [as opposed to the Palisades conversion charters] is to find facilities, as the Renaissance Academy has found in the Palisades. ”’The Rand Corporation has done a study to determine the impact of charter schools on student achievement. That picture is not clear due to the homogeneous nature of the schools surveyed. In the Palisades, though, our charter schools continue to have high results and high student achievement. Some of that can be attributed to attracting strong leadership and having success in using limited resources.’

‘I wouldn’t know him if he stood up in me soup,’ mused Brenda Blethyn’s needy, good-natured mum in Mike Leigh’s 1996 film ‘Secrets and Lies.’ Sometimes by just recapturing a bit of dialogue, film critic Kenneth Turan makes us smile and eager to see a film for the first time, or once again. Turan, a longtime Palisades resident, has been reviewing films for The Los Angeles Times since 1991. In his first compilation, ‘Never Coming To A Theater Near You,’ he celebrates films ‘that have meant the most to me,’ films that many people missed in their initial release. The book can be taken as a personal recommendation from Turan, who took his time culling his favorite films from a list of hundreds and revising and updating those earlier reviews. ‘These are motion pictures I likely would not have experienced’and possibly not even have heard of’if reviewing weren’t my job, and there isn’t one of them I wouldn’t rush to see again,’ he writes in the introduction. Turan will speak about his favorites and sign his book this Saturday, November 13 at 4 p.m. at Village Books on Swarthmore. Readers recognize Turan’s style, which not only honors the layman’s interest in wanting to know what the film is about, but also assesses its merits and shortfalls. ‘I’m always conscious I’m writing for readers, not for the future or in an abstract way,’ Turan told the Palisadian-Post. ‘People are looking to read something interesting and need some help in figuring out if this is a movie they want to see. So I tell them something about the plot and then grapple with the film. I confront the film on its own terms.’ Turan has divided the book into five categories, including English-language films, foreign, documentaries, classics and retrospectives on directors, such as Robert Bresson, or genres, like Chinese martial arts films. In selecting the 150 reviews in the book, Turan considered only those films he had reviewed for The Times. ‘I went through a list of every review I had written and began to pare away. I chose films that I loved, smaller films that got away, and I also wanted the reviews to be well-written, reviews that I was happy with the writing.’ Some films, Turan asserts, proved to be so unusual, so iconoclastic that Hollywood had no idea how to market them: ‘Devil in a Blue Dress,’ ‘Election’ or ‘Wonder Boys.’ Others celebrate actors in unexpected roles, such as Nicole Kidman as a Russian mail-order bride in ‘Birthday Girl.’ Of particular interest is the chapter on documentaries, Turan’s ‘secret pleasure.’ In the last decade there has been a dramatic shift in the appreciation of the documentary, Turans says, attributing much of the turnaround to the Sundance Film Festival. ‘Fully half of the films in this section received their debuts at the Park City event.’ He expects documentaries to continue to compete for viewers’ attention not only because of the boost from film festivals, but also because the relatively affordable cost of making them. ‘Inexpensive, lightweight digital cameras are changing the way documentaries are made. Filmmakers used to spend half their time raising money. If you do a good job with a digital camera, you can have a long theatrical life that can play in any theater. ‘These films are making money. ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ is an example of a film that made over $100 million. ‘Spellbound’ was a wonderful word-of-mouth hit; people loved it.’ Like many of his generation, Turan grew up (in Brooklyn) going to the movies, and only got interested in ‘film’ while a student at Swarthmore in the 1960s. In graduate school at Columbia School of Journalism he took a class with Judith Crist, the outspoken critic for the New York Harold Tribune, who crystallized the notion for him that ‘maybe I could do this.’ After a stint at the Washington Post, he came out to Los Angeles in 1978 and initially freelanced for more than a decade before joining the L.A. Times. He was first hired as editor of the book review section’he is an eager reader’and then became the paper’s film critic. For the last half-dozen years, Turan has also been reviewing for NPR’s Morning Edition, which he says has been an education. ‘I have had to learn how to write for the ear, which has been a completely fascinating experience.’ Movies are what the job is, and Turan watches three to five a week. ‘Some days I see two: one in the morning before I go to work, and one at night.’ At film festivals, he sees three or four a day’for two weeks. Despite having seen practically every plot contrivance, and his share of bad films’and, yes, there are bad independent films too’Turan is still smitten with the medium. ‘Films are still the art form more people seem to connect with. Where else can you get a complete aesthetic experience within two hours?’