School buses, backpacks, new teachers, the first day
Wondering why the traffic is heavier than it was last week? Today is the first day of school for hundreds of thousands of students on the traditional calendar, including more than 450,000 in L.A. Unified.
Some of those students will go to new schools, one of them the nation's most expensive high school, the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center. Originally named the Belmont Learning Complex, the downtown school cost more than $400 million.
Five new district schools open, part of LAUSD's $12.6-billion program to build 132 schools by 2012. The district intends to offer every student the chance to attend a neighborhood school on a traditional calendar. To date, LAUSD has completed 74 new schools and 59 additions.
The new schools: Roybal Learning Center, Roy Romer Middle School in North Hollywood, Helen Bernstein High School in Hollywood, Dr. James Edward Jones Primary Center in South L.A. and Richard E. Byrd Middle School in Sun Valley. In addition, 17 charter schools are opening.
School and city officials are, in their own small way, contributing to the morning traffic jams with appearances scheduled at schools all over town, including at the new schools. Dignitaries on hand at various places will include Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and L.A. schools Supt. David L. Brewer.
The mayor has more at stake than usual on this opening day: Eight schools will open for the first time under the aegis of a nonprofit he set up as part of a high-profile school-reform effort.
-- Mary MacVean
