Hearing on Proposed Palm Street School Tonight

A plan to bring a private high school with a maximum capacity of 250 kids to Palm Street will be presented tonight at the Town Council's Land Use Committee meeting.

The school would be an extension campus of the Arroyo Pacific Academy in Arcadia, and would be the latest in a series of battles over the property at 183-205 Palm St.

The site sparked the formation of the Palm Street Area Resident's Association (PSARA) after the Sahag-Mesrob Armenian Christian School operated at the site during the 2008-09 school year without telling the community or acquiring all the necessary permits from L.A. County.

The school's inclusion in Tuesday night's was first mentioned in a post last week on the Altadenablog.

Clarke's hope is that by being up-front with the community he will persuade at least some people that the school can operate without disrupting the neighborhood.  He hopes to win approval of the plan at Tuesday night's Land Use Committee meeting, and later get the support of the full Town Council.

"I want to hopefully present our proposal as something that will be beneficial to the community," Clarke said.

He said he is aware that the intensity of the opposition to the plan means there are probably some people he will never win over.

"There are some who are adamantly opposed, but they are really nice people," Clarke said. "I want to come to an agreement with them."

Clarke noted that the biggest complaints he has heard from neighbors are about potential traffic and noise, which he said he would mitigate with strict rules about the number of cars allowed on campus.  He also said that the school has an intense focus on rigorous academics and does not anticipate very many outdoor activities that would cause noise.

Neither the Land Use Committee nor the Town Council has the power to approve or deny the permits that Clarke would need to open the school.  That will ultimately be decided by county hearing officers.

Getting the approval of either the Land Use Committee or the Town Council could be difficult given that Palm Street is lined with signs that say "No School on Palm."

In addition, the Land Use Committee is not bound by guidelines that determine what the appropriate use of a property is - as an advisory group, the committee could make a ruling simply based on the opinions of neighbors that are expressed in the meeting.

That said, the committee does try to take planning guidelines into account when making decisions, said Steve Haussler, a committee member.

"We don't have the legal constraints official commissions have, but we do try to be responsible," Haussler said. 

Clarke said he hopes to get county approval of the project in time to open the school in January, and would anticipate about 80 to 90 kids moving to campus to start with.

He said the existing school in Arcadia has a significant number of students from Altadena, and he believes that having a physical location there would greatly benefit those students.

"I'm not bringing strangers into Altadena," Clarke said.

The Land Use Committee meeting will be held at 7 p.m. in the .