Posted: July 8th, 2008

Education

July 8, 2008
Pacific Palisades Chabad preschool denied lease extension

By Jane Ulman

Public testimony was presented last night’s emergency meeting convened by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to consider Chabad of Pacific Palisades’ appeal to temporarily extend its preschool lease at Temescal Gateway Park. Credit: Robert Garcia/The City Project

An eight-to-one vote by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Board — along with a unanimous vote by the Conservancy Advisory Board — last night soundly defeated Chabad of Pacific Palisades’ appeal to temporarily extend the lease for its preschool site at Temescal Gateway Park from September 2008 through January 2009.

The vote upheld the unequivocal denial by Conservancy executive director Joe Edmiston on June 12 to extend Chabad’s lease. It also confirmed the decision of the Conservancy in April 2007 to stop leasing the public parkland to private entities — including Chabad’s Palisades Jewish Early Education Center and Little Dolphins Preschool — and to increase public access to the park, especially for underprivileged youth from congested urban areas. The park is owned by the State of California and operated by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

A standing-room-only crowd of several- hundred people, some of them waving signs reading “Public Lands in Public Hands,” attended the spirited and occasionally divisive emergency meeting held on Monday evening, July 7, at the park’s Conference and Retreat Center off Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades.

During the three-hour meeting, public testimony was heard from supporters of the Conservancy, from environmental and educational groups using the park for educational and recreational activities for low-income and at-risk children, and from representatives and friends of Chabad.

“We found a new location in January,” Rabbi Zushe Cunin, executive director of Chabad of Pacific Palisades, told the group. “We had every reason to believe we wouldn’t need an extension.”

Cunin reiterated Chabad’s offer of a $250,000 bond to secure their word and to guarantee departure from the park premises by January 31, 2009.

Additionally, Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, father of Zushe Cunin and president of Chabad of California, the parent organization, invited 3,000 inner-city children to Chabad’s Camp Gan Israel in Running Springs for four days, all expenses paid, to provide them with an even more authentic outdoor experience.

“I will give you my cell phone number,” he said.

But others, such as Robert Garcia, executive director of City Project, while lamenting a situation in which “child is pitted against child,” spoke in opposition to renewing the lease and to privatizing Temescal Gateway Park. Working with 20 organizations, including Anahuak Youth Association and the National Hispanic Environmental Council, City Project supports public access to parklands for all.

“Equal access to public resources means, under California law, the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures and income,” said Garcia, pointing out that Pacific Palisades has 404.83 acres of parks per thousand residents, compared to .66 acres in East Los Angeles.

And while Chabad supporters stressed that the school is using less than half an acre in a 140-acre park, the Conservancy’s Edmiston said that the park is predominately covered by chaparral, while Chabad’s site, which includes three trailers and a fenced-in field, occupies one of only two flat, grassy spots in the park that can accommodate large groups of children.

“It’s a zero-sum situation. If you have trailers there, you’re not going to be able to have kids playing there,” he said.

Amy Lethbridge, in charge of education for the Conservancy, told the group that more experiential programs have been planned for the coming year, including additional contracts with Los Angeles Unified School District to bring out more kids.

“I need space to serve the very programs the park was purchased to serve,” she said.

Read the rest of this article in the Jewish Journal . . .