Onward We Go With NOISE!

Neighborhoods Organized and Involved to Support Education is the acronym chosen by a majority of the members of the steering committee picked as the name of the group that supports education in San Pedro, but feels that building a large school at Angel's Gate is not the best way to provide the best education for high school students in the San Pedro area.

There will be lots and lots of work to do and the Steering Committee will be out there welcoming more members to its membership and in turn, be best able to assist other members of the group in helping San Pedro provide the best possibilities for educating OUR high school students.

San Pedro High School, according to some individuals has grown in student body count to an unmanageable number of students. It should be all of our wishes to find the best way to educate not only kids attending school regularly in San Pedro, but the thousands and thousands of other LAUSD students that will come to the Point Fermin Outdoor Education Center for a remarkable and strong program of studies and experiences that can be found nowhere else in the entire LAUSD system.

NOISE will have community meetings! I hope to be able to plaster the date, time, and location of the first meeting that everyone is invited to, sometime in the next two weeks.

Taking on the challenges we are all facing in our mutual quests to provide good educations to LAUSD students, takes time. I do believe however, that NOISE is moving forward with a good deal of preparation, knowledge, experiences, and guidance to provide the best associations possible to deal with the challenges.

We are going to need volunteers. We are going to need lots of volunteers. Please think about what you might be willing and able to volunteer to do to help NOISE find the best possible solutions to the problems faced with trying to educate the growing number of students that need our help.

I, along with so many others I have met in these past very few months, are trying to find alternatives to building a large school at Angel's Gate, NOT BECAUSE WE LIVE IN THE AREA.

Sure, many members of NOISE live near the proposed campus' site, but most of them also believe that just stating "no new school at Angel's Gate" is not enough! Many believe there are real, true, and viable alternatives to building such a large campus on that site.

Nobody is a bad person if they want or don't want a new high school campus built on the proposed site. Shouldn't we all take the best interests of all of the students into our plans, wishes, and opinions?

As I hope you know, the comment period for the Notice of Preparation and Initial Study for South Region High School has been extended to May 5, 2008. That should give all of us and groups we may belong to, time to draft our own set of comments to the documents.

I hope all the residents living in the Palisades Residents Association's area will attend their May 13 Annual Meeting at White Point Elementary School. Councilwoman Janice Hahn will be attending that meeting, and I think members of various LAUSD groups will attend.

This very important meeting will also include elections to the Board of the Association and possible the election of officers to serve on that Board. The Board can have as many as 17 members, so please think about helping out your own homeowners' group, if you live in their area. The group's Web site is: http://www.sanpedropalisades.org./

The Steering Committee of NOISE also has residents living in the Point Fermin Residents Association as members. The Point Fermin Residents Association will also be a very important group to help NOISE find alternatives to building such a big school on such a precious piece of property.

Further information will be coming out concerning committees, news, how you can help, and a host of other items. Please "stay tuned".