Don’t sell our schools short
Schools are a hard sell these days. Everybody appreciates what they do for children, but nobody wants to deal with the intrusions the schools supposedly bring.

For years, the Las Virgenes Unified School District sought residential approval to build A.C. Stelle Middle School in Calabasas. Plans to build a new preschool in Oak Park fell victim to voter anti-growth sentiment, and a proposal for a private Jewish school near Old Agoura can’t get past the wrath of local homeowners. Recalcitrant residents are everywhere.

As for colleges, Soka University near Calabasas held its final graduation last week. The Japanese-owned institution was forced to close at the request of environmentalists who pushed long and hard to turn the campus into parkland. The 20-year-old school was eventually sold to a consortium of public agencies for $35 million and will cease operations shortly.

The Soka story has two sides. At one time the school wanted to double its footprint in the Santa Monica Mountains—an audacious move by anyone’s standard—until a series of court rulings stopped all further growth. Even today the campus buildings occupy only about 12 of the 588 acres of land Soka once owned. The courts made sure that more than 95 percent of the scenic grounds would remain open space.

We suspect the Park Service headquarters and visitor amenities that will take Soka’s place will bring their own set of traffic and development-related issues. In addition, the park project and its ongoing operations must be paid for with public dollars, and the cost won’t be cheap. Be careful what you ask for.

Schools often find themselves on the losing end when the competition for scarce resources heats up. We wish more land in the community could be preserved as open space, but given our druthers we’d rather see more educational facilities, not less. We need schools of all types and should do all we can to ensure that they thrive.