Larchmont Charter Hollygrove campus searches for new site
After 16 years, Larchmont Charter School (LCS), which resides on four separate Los Angeles area campuses, will pull up stakes at one of its original locations, the famed El Centro-to-Vine Hollygrove campus, and look for new school grounds.
Uplift Family Services, which leases the Hollygrove space to LCS, is planning to increase the adolescent and youth services it offers to the community, setting up the departure of LCS in 2023.
Currently, the LCS Hollygrove campus accommodates about 350 students transitional kindergarten (TK) to fourth grade. The other LCS campuses include Fairfax in West Hollywood (TK to fourth), Selma Elementary in Hollywood (fifth to seventh) and LaFayette Park, at 2801 W. Sixth St. (eighth to 12th), for a total of about 1,610 students.
“As a TK to 12th school with several sites, we have some flexibility in terms of how we configure, moving forward,” says Executive Director Amy Held. “Ideally, we’d hope to remain in the same general vicinity… and would need a site that can accommodate 200 to 400 students.”
Held is hopeful that a local space can be found that features everything a child could need for a solid education. “We would love for our new home to have green space like we have at Hollygrove,” she explains, “along with spacious modern classrooms that are bright and airy, a garden and kitchen, performance, gathering and play spaces for kids, display space for student work and projects, ample parking, and [be] located in a spot that’s accessible for the diverse families we serve and a center of the community.”
Larchmont Charter School opened in 2005 with 120 students, born out of the dreams of a determined group of local parents (most residing in the Larchmont community) who wanted to offer children a constructivist public school that reflected the racial and socio-economic diversity of Los Angeles and the neighborhood.
The Hollygrove location, a former orphanage known for its most famous resident, Marilyn Monroe, fit the bill perfectly. But now, as Larchmont Charter School looks ahead to spreading its roots in the next decades, it is focused on finding another long-term site, approximately 15,000-30,000 square feet, that will excite the local community and the children who live in it.
Category: News
