Old Houses Give Way to New Classrooms

The Vaughn Next Century Learning Center moved closer to meeting its goals of expanding the school Thursday as construction workers razed three dilapidated adjacent houses to make way for a $2.2-million facility that will house, among other things, a major community library.

“I never imagined that we could accept this kind of challenge,” said Vaughn’s executive director, Yvonne Chan. “When we first walked into this school, our biggest dreams were to get off year-round [scheduling] and get smaller class sizes.

“Little did we know we could do so much more as a charter school,” Chan said.

The school purchased the homes in October. Construction is scheduled to begin in May once the site is cleared of rubble and debris.

In addition to the library and 10 new classrooms, the new two-story building will house several technology rooms, including a science lab, a media production studio and a teacher training center to be run by Cal State Northridge.

Another portion of the facility will house a child-care center for staff, a computer repair shop and possibly a small bookstore, all of which will be staffed by parents of children attending the school as part of a job-training program Chan said she hopes to implement.

“When there’s this kind of motivation then we say let’s dream on,” Chan said.

Vaughn has been on the forefront of changes for several years. It was the city’s first public elementary school to shrink classes to 20 students in August. At that time the school went beyond Gov. Pete Wilson’s call to reduce two grades and instead slashed the sizes of grades 1 through 3. Now, Vaughn is once again ahead of the governor’s call for more class-size reduction with the construction of the new building. Chan said the additional classrooms will allow the school to reduce class sizes for the entire school.

Chan said all kindergarten classes will be reduced by October. The remaining classes will be shrunk once the building is completed in December.