Palm Street area residents near a contested school location claim that their prominent "No School on Palm" signs were vandalized the same day that the property's owner -- an Arcadia private school -- was circulating flyers to gain neighborhood support for their planned campus.
According to Nancy Rothwell, spokesperson for the Palm St. Area Resident's Association (PSARA), about four or five "No School on Palm" signs were destroyed or removed from the yards of homes directly facing the school property last Friday. At least one resident called the sheriff, Rothwell said.
On that same day, residents found flyers in their mailboxes from the property owner, the Arroyo Pacific Academy, that explained its plans for the property.
"We talked to several people who said the person putting out the flyers did this to the signs," Rothwell said, although nobody provided a description of the vandal. The signs have since been replaced, and, says Rothwell, "we put even more signs out."
The property at 183-205 Palm St. was most recently the site of an unpermitted school shut down by the county in 2009. It was purchased last November by Philip Clarke, president of the Arroyo Pacific Academy in Arcadia. At the time, Clarke said that he envisioned the Palm St. property as "another campus for our school to be used for specialized work."
Since then, he has applied for a conditional use permit for a 250 student school at the location. The flyer circulated to residents last week says that the Arcadia campus is "reaching capacity (150 students) and the school needs facilities for the arts, environment and technology, as well as the standard college prep subjects. We believe the Palm Street property to be ideally suited to serve as a secondary campus."
The flyer attempts to address many complaints from the neighbors stemming from how the previous school was run, and how Arroyo Pacific plans to address them.
A frequent complaint about the previous owners was the noise from outdoor gym classes and recess permeated the neighborhood. The Arroyo Pacific Academy flyer says that "the Altadena campus will not host sporting events because of the location and arrangement of the buildings. Indoor fitness and recreational activities will be in the assembly hall ... or the activities center."
Traffic -- the student drop-off and pick-up on the narrow street -- was a another neighborhood concern. The flyer says that students will not be dropped off at the Altadena location, but will gather in a "remote parking facility' and be transported in hybrid electric buses.
The flyer also promises an open house this summer.
Following the distribution of the flyer and destruction of the signs, Rothwell sent an email to Clarke, detailing the vandalism and saying that putting the flyers in mailboxes was illegal (anything placed in a mailbox needs postage):
The methodology that was used to distribute the Arroyo Pacific Academy flyers this past Friday, along with the simultaneous removal or destruction of many “No School on Palm” signs within the immediate neighborhood, have together left an extremely bad impression of Arroyo Pacific Academy among most of the neighbors. ... Because your flyer clearly states "We welcome your questions and input!", we thought that you would probably want to know how the recent actions by your flyer distributor(s) have been perceived by many of your Altadena neighbors.
We have left a message with Philip Clarke, seeking comment as of press time.
Websites:
The Arroyo Pacific Academy has set up a website for the Altadena campus, which has the text of the flyer: http://apaltadena.org/
It also has a Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_210743282273752
Palm St. Area Residents Association: http://www.altadenapsara.org/
