After weeks of negotiating community traffic and safety concerns, and acquiring a temporary certificate of occupancy only last Friday, Renaissance Academy Charter High School opened its doors Monday morning. While freshmen reported to the main campus, located in the lower level of the 881 Alma Real building, 10th-12th graders congregated in organized groups at two picnic areas in the nearby Palisades Recreation Center. Asked how he felt at the end of the first day, the school’s founding director Paul McGlothlin said, ‘I felt like it was one week, but I was happy and very pleased that it was so positive. [At Renaissance] I see Palisades parents at their best.’ Several parent volunteers lined Alma Real, between La Cruz and Ocampo, directing students and monitoring drop-offs with orange and yellow poster board signs. ‘Welcome RA Students, No Drop-Off’ read Shelly Fariello’s sign. She’s president of the PTSA, and her daughter, Carly, is a freshman at the school. Students were instructed to use crosswalks and to enter the school by following the walkway (adjacent to the parking lot driveway) on the left side of the building and taking the stairs to the lower-level entrance. They were also told not to go through the lobby, where administrative and counseling offices have been built. As advised, parents dropped their teenagers off on Swarthmore, between La Cruz and Bowdoin along the back side of Palisades Elementary School, and one teacher commented that ‘it was really smooth, no congestion at all.’ On Tuesday, about 20 students from Topanga and 23 from West L.A. arrived by bus, but the school is expecting more students from both locations. Renaissance will pay $100,000 to lease the buses this school year, according to Kathy Hartman, a Brentwood resident whose son, Teddy, is a freshman at Renaissance. Hartman’s other son is a sophomore at Palisades High School. ‘I’ve told the Village School and Pali Elementary principals, ‘If you have a complaint, I want to hear from you,” said Hartman, who was also hoping to meet with Sister Patricia McGahan at Corpus Christi, a third school in the immediate vicinity. ‘We’re going to work the kinks out. We’re warning the students about driving to school; if they have to drive, they must rent space in parking lots. The bus pass is $475 for the year, and if students can’t afford it, [PTSA] parents will provide financial help.’ ‘Parents are critical to a smooth operation,’ said RA parent Joe Sheppard, the manager of Camp Josepho in Rustic Canyon, who helped with organization on the first day of school. Sheppard also supplied the radios and caution vests used by parent volunteers and staff, and said he had been helping with last-minute classroom preparations until about 9 p.m. Sunday night. While six of the eight rooms built this summer were clean and furnished with tables and chairs on Monday morning, freshmen initially met and sat on the hardwood floor of the large common space connecting the rooms. Four rooms will serve as traditional classrooms and the rest will function as science/art spaces, including a recording studio. The lower level of the school also includes a women’s and a men’s bathroom, each with three stalls, and two one-room unisex bathrooms. Meanwhile, about 150 sophomores, juniors and seniors headed to the park, where RA had rented the lower and upper picnic areas both Monday and Tuesday. ‘The first week is a balance between actual classes and fixing schedules,’ McGlothlin said. ‘We also need to train the students to know where they’re supposed to go. We don’t have our classrooms configured the way we want, and we’re moving the administration offices from Sunset/PCH up here. McGlothlin said that the school is planning to hold core classes (possibilities include English, math and history) at some unspecified off-campus locations, which ‘in the next couple of weeks will account (Continued on Page 3) for 50 percent of our capacity, once we have the contracts worked out.’ However, McGlothlin added that the community has brought ‘an amazing amount of pressure to the park and library [to not allow the school to use their facilities].’ Park director David Gadelha said the school ‘has talked to us about taking permits out to use our facilities’ but that his department will be meeting with McGlothlin to discuss some concerns before issuing these permits. ‘We’ve received a lot of complaints, and before we issue a permit we want to make sure the school’s activities comply with our department’s regulations,’ Gadelha said. Some of the concerns, mainly from park users with small children and neighborhood residents, include large groups of students eating lunch in the park every day, classes being held on the open grass areas and the impact on parking in the Rec Center’s lot. (The school has rented about 27 spaces in the Alma real building for its entire teaching and administrative staff.) Renaissance also hopes to have its theater arts students use Pierson Playhouse (Haverford at Temescal Canyon Road) every Tuesday and Thursday morning, but no contract or lease has been signed, according to Eva Holberg, vice president of administration for Theatre Palisades’ executive board (the Pierson Playhouse landlord). ‘We are still looking into the legal ramifications,’ Holberg said. The school does have an agreement with JIVA Yoga Studio on Sunset, where students in all grades will be able to take yoga classes at specific times Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, according to head yoga instructor William Asad. Last Friday, about 100 RA students in grades 10, 11 and 12 were bused to Santa Monica College, where they are taking college-level electives through the dual-enrollment program. These courses are held Fridays at SMC’s Academy of Entertainment and Technology, located at 1660 Stewart St. in Santa Monica. ‘We’re excited about our relationship with Renaissance,’ said Katharine Muller, Dean of the Academy of Entertainment and Technology. ‘We will be delivering classes to [RA] students in grades 11-12, and some 10th graders.’ The five electives SMC is offering include photography, animation, interactive design, graphic arts, and video production and editing. Not only will the students be able to earn college credit with these classes, but ‘they will get the feel of a college campus,’ Muller said. In addition to enrichment classes, one of Renaissance Academy’s projects during this first year will be for students, faculty and parents to write a school constitution, said McGlothlin. ‘The teachers who founded the school are the founding teachers, and the first year students have the status of founding students.’ The school is closed Thursday for Rosh Hashanah.

Where were the coffee and cookies? Last Thursday’s Community Council meeting, held in the community room at the Palisades Branch Library, was one of the longest in recent history, running from 7 p.m. until just past 11 p.m. Besides dealing with complicated agenda items such as the proposed preferential parking district in the Palisades, efforts to deal with the ‘mystery pond’ at the mouth of Santa Monica Canyon, and a controversial L.A. City Council proposal on inclusionary zoning and how it might affect the Palisades (see story, page 4), considerable time was taken up by comments from the floor on equally contentious issues: Playa Vista and the Renaissance Academy, which opened Monday in the 881 Alma Real building (see adjacent story). PREFERENTIAL PARKING DISTRICT In a surprise move, council advisor Jack Allen, who was initially opposed to preferential parking district (‘Preferential Parking Is Not the Solution,’ Palisadian-Post, July 15) is now supporting the proposal. ‘While I’m opposed in principle I think the city has worked out a reasonable compromise,’ Allen said. ‘This won’t have the domino effect that I worried about, residents are going to be able to park in front of their houses, and the two-hour limits will remain as they are now.’ Allen did wonder why the proposed district was so large (a six-block area around the Palisades Recreation Center and the business district) and why some residents want to restrict night parking on Carthage. He was also concerned that the city will ‘sweep the real problem’the lack of adequate parking’under the rug.’ Discussion then focused on how residents can get their street included (the petition requires signatures from two-thirds of the residents on the block). Concerns were also expressed about parking limitations around the Recreation Center, which one resident said has impacted him ‘for 32 years.’ On the recommendation of chairman Norman Kulla, the council voted in favor of not taking a position on the matter, deferring the matter to the mandated L.A. Department of Transportation public hearing to be held in Mort’s Oak Room on Monday, September 27, starting at 7 p.m. A color-coded map showing all the impacted streets is now on display in the library. PLAYA VISTA During the public comment period, Paul Herzog, who works with Ballona Wetlands Land Trust, invited Palisadians to a town hall meeting on Phase (Continued on Page 6) . Renaissance Academy So heated was residents confrontation with RA principal Paul McGlothlin that the meeting was never formally adjourned by council chairman Norman Kulla. The debate on the new charter high school (250 students in four grades, 14 full-time teachers) continued in the library parking lot. Residents’ concerns brought up during the public comment portion of the meeting focused not on the kind of school it is (individualized, college-prep curriculum) but its location: 881 Alma Real, where RA has a five-year lease for 13,000-sq.-ft., spread out over two floors in the commercial/retail building. ‘Is there anything we can do to stop it [the school from locating there]?’ asked one resident. ‘This board does not have that authority,’ relied Kulla. ‘But we can modify what is being planned.’ ‘I don’t care about the traffic or the parking problems,’ said a Corpus Christi parent. ‘I care about the safety of our children, given the proximity of this high school. I want to know what LAUSD will do if there are behavioral problems. Where’s their gym? They need a place to hang out but not next door to four elementary schools.’ ‘When I was in high school I wasn’t free to roam in a business district,’ said resident Joe Collins. ‘What’s appalling to me is I don’t see that an effort has been made by Renaissance to communicate their intentions to this community,’ said another resident. ‘I’m sorry you don’t think we have,’ replied McGlothlin. While plans for the alternative school have been in the works for over a year it was only after the school secured the Alma Real location in July (Palisadian-Post, July 29) that some residents expressed fears over traffic, parking and safety in an already congested area in the village business district. Their fears were compounded at the raucous August 26 Community Council meeting in which McGlothlin was unable to answer specific questions about the school’s operational plans’from how many students will occupy the Alma Real building at any one time, to where the students will be dropped off. McGlothlin was also accused by several people of giving ‘misinformation’ at the August meeting. ‘You certainly led us to believe that you had an agreement with the library to hold classes in this room,’ said Monique Ford, field deputy to Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski. ‘Do you have a written agreement with the library?’ McGlothlin admitted that he did not, eventually apologized for not keeping the community properly informed and said that he would make every effort in the week ahead to answer residents concerns. It was agreed that he attend the September 23 meeting to bring residents and council members up to date.

Things have a way of falling into place just in the nick of time, as they did at Palisades High School when it reopened last week after a summer that brought a new leadership team, instructional ideas and expanded Internet communication. A month before the September 9 opening, new Principal Gloria Martinez was unsure of the precise number of students who would be attending this semester, while still trying to fill out the faculty roster. But by Monday this week, she had filled teacher vacancies except for one social studies instructor. According to the ‘No Child Left Behind’ mandate, all teachers must now have a California credential, and those with an emergency credential must complete their course work before January 2005. The school’s student population has stabilized at 2,600 which, according to Martinez, eliminates the necessity of adding temporary portable classrooms, although the average number of students per classroom remains about 35. Martinez, who started her career as a Spanish teacher and was assistant principal at Malibu High school for the past six years, is a student-centered administrator. She visited every classroom this week and ’employed’ her first student aide, who signed up for a TA credit class. ‘This was an exciting day,’ she said Tuesday. ‘My office aide typed all my letters, including one to businesses in the community asking for support for our positive incentive program.’ Students are given ‘Dolphin’ tickets for being helpful around campus, which in turn are redeemable for gift certificates. ‘One teacher told me that first she thought this would be something hokey, but the students really seem to be enjoying it.’ Academic improvement is the focus not only on the national level, but also the mandate for the charter school. This week teacher groups began to work on establishing 10 essential standards for their subject area. An example for 10th grade English might be that students studying Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ would be able to identify the character traits of the main characters based upon what they say about themselves. At the end of the unit, students would analyze character based on dialogue, monologue and soliloquy. Everything will be spelled out and clear as to expectations, Martinez said. ‘There will be an assessment on how well the teachers are teaching to these standards and assessing student performance.’ She admits that ‘at the beginning this is a lot of work, but it will save time in the end because everybody will be teaching to the same depth with clear expectations.’ Martinez is also expanding communication with teachers by writing a weekly letter that includes up-to-the-minute information on what’s going on. ‘In this week’s letter I was able to alleviate many teachers’ fears of overcrowding by telling them the exact number of students.’ Surplus money from Pali’s first year of fiscal independence has also been used to move ahead with information technology. Information for parents will be extended by establishing an Internet Service Provider (ISP) site, and expanding e-mail communication with parents and students. Attendance and grades will be recorded electronically. Quality of student life is also an issue for Martinez, who will follow LAUSD’s efforts to the focus on more healthful food choices. ‘By Thursday, we want to have phased out all carbonated drinks, and in addition the Associated Student Body will try to determine what healthy foods students are actually buying. We want to offer healthier food choices in the cafeteria, student story and the vending machines.’