While teaching its students about successful participation and service in the Palisades community, Renaissance Academy Charter High School struggles to maintain ground at its 881 Alma Real location. At 4 p.m. Tuesday, 25 Renaissance students volunteered to empty trash cans and pick up loose trash in the Palisades business district, a project that was part of the community service component of the charter, according to Bill Bryan, RA board president and parent. ‘The school plans to make this a regular thing,’ Bryan said. ‘The real question is ‘Why haven’t we done this sooner?’ and the answer is ‘We haven’t done it sooner because we’ve been trying to survive.” And survive they have, despite being served with a Notice of Default by building landlord Greg Schem two weeks ago, and undergoing a progress inspection from L.A.’s Department of Building and Safety last week. The inspection was performed after Building and Safety ‘received a complaint about occupancy,’ said Robert Steinbach, the department’s public information officer. The school was found to be ‘exceeding what permits allow for number of occupants’ and ‘occupying parts of the building outside [the school’s] temporary Certificate of Occupancy,’ including using ground-level space as classrooms and more than the four permitted classrooms on the lower terrace level. To date, 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. Renaissance currently has about 325 students. As a result of the inspection, Building and Safety issued the school a correction notice, which is ‘what inspectors use on any building site,’ according to Steinbach. No citation or ‘issue to comply’ was issued because there were no life safety problems and Renaissance is making an appeal to City Planning on the parking issue, Steinbach said. The parking situation needs to be resolved before Building and Safety can issue Renaissance a ‘change of use’ permit to E(ducation)-Occupancy, allowing for one person per every 20 square feet. The change of use would allow for over 350 students. Under the Pacific Palisades Specific Plan, a high school requires ‘seven parking spaces for each classroom or teaching station.’ This plan technically requires RA, if and when it is officially permitted by Building and Safety to use all 15 classrooms, to provide a total of 105 parking spaces in the building. While the underground garage can accommodate up to 268 vehicles, and the school has only 27 designated spaces in its lease’reflecting the current permitted use of four classrooms’RA said it only needs 20 spaces and has ‘initiated the process for obtaining a parking variance,’ according to Bryan. ‘Because they’re taking the necessary steps to comply [with Building and Safety], we suspend enforcement,’ Steinbach said yesterday. ‘We won’t take any further action unless there’s a [decision made about the parking variance] from City Planning.’ Meanwhile, Renaissance met its October 25 deadline for responding to landlord Schem’s Notice of Default. Last week, Schem told the Palisadian-Post that the school had ’10 days to comply with the terms of the lease’ from the time it was served. As to specific violations of the lease, Schem only said, ‘there are way more students using the building than are permitted by Building and Safety.’ When asked about RA’s response to the Notice of Default, Schem said, ‘We’d love to see them stay but they have to stay within an amount [of students] that works for Building and Safety requirements.’ Bryan emphasized that Renaissance ‘strenuously disagrees with [the landlord’s] interpretation of the lease,’ specifically in terms of ground floor use, and said, ‘We will pursue relief from that [interpretation] with the help of lawyers.’ He added that RA has told its attorneys, ‘We will follow your conservative advice as long as you aggressively pursue getting [use of] the space back.’ From a financial point of view, the public school has struggled most with ‘the complete prohibition of our class activities on the ground floor,’ which Bryan said ‘is backbreaking, but we’ve accepted it.’ This week, Renaissance has allowed 150 students to study in the terrace level because that is the number permitted by the Los Angeles Fire Department. Those students have been using seven of the eight classrooms on that level. Only independent study groups of about 10 students have been using the ground level, according to Bryan. Other RA students have been attending classes at satellite locations, including Aldersgate Retreat Center on Haverford, which is owned by the United Methodist Church. ‘We have a semi-permanent arrangement with Aldersgate,’ said Bryan, who explained that they will be using the facility (three to four rooms) almost every day for the rest of the school year, except for days when the rooms have already been reserved or planned events are taking place. Aldersgate could not be reached for comment. Students are also studying in a room at the Methodist Church, the YMCA board room and, occasionally, in Mort’s Oak Room. ‘Sometimes [the students] get scared that the school is going to go away,’ Bryan said. ‘We tell them that it’s going to be in existence for a long time.’ He added that only ‘a tiny number’ have left Renaissance. The school is still continuing to search for an alternate permanent location.
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