By MARY MORAN Special to the Palisadian-Post The newly elected Palisades Charter High School Board of Directors held its first meeting on February 17 in the school library. Voting members of the board include principal and executive director Linda Hosford; teachers Holly Korbonski, Minh Ha Ngo and Libby Butler; non-certificated employee Gay Chambers; parents Jonathan Fielding, Ruth Simeon and Jim Suhr; and community members Harriet Leva, Tina Lee and Jack Sutton. Non-voting members are Greg Martins, the school’s acting chief business officer, and Edward Kim, student. Voting by staff, students and parents for the new board members occurred in December and January, and results were announced at the last meeting of the former Governance Council on January 20. Board members will serve until June 2005. Hosford, who plans to retire in June, will serve as an ex-officio member of the board and is the interim secretary. Korbonski, a member of the English Department, is the student-elected teacher representative to the board. She places a high priority on student involvement and on creating a student-friendly environment at PaliHi. Butler, a math teacher and former traveling Palisades student, believes that “Pali has all of the elements necessary to become a school with groundbreaking, innovative programs that serve the needs of a diverse student population.” A math teacher and former Governance Council member, Minh Ha Ngo, the board’s vice- chair, wants to take an active role in creating a school where education is a top priority. The Palisades faculty elected both Butler and Ngo. Gay Chambers, senior office assistant working in the attendance office, is a former Pali student and parent of two Pali graduates. She says, “My love for Pali goes way back and I want to see Pali succeed.” Dr. Jonathan Fielding, a Palisades parent and new board chair, believes that parents need every opportunity to participate in major decisions about school priorities, policies and curriculum changes. As the current Director of Public Health for Los Angeles County, he brings a wealth of expertise in finance, personnel, strategic planning and management to his position on the board. Ruth Simeon is a businesswoman and former teacher and college professor from South Los Angeles, with skills in education, budgeting, human resources, process improvement and operational efficiency. She hopes to represent a broader spectrum of the student population served by Palisades Charter High School. Board treasurer Jim Suhr, a real estate developer and parent of a ninth grader, believes that charter schools are the best path to creating educational excellence in public schools. He brings management, financial and general business skills to the board. Tina Lee is a lawyer from Manhattan Beach who believes that a good high school education “fosters confidence and develops personalities, enabling students to overcome any obstacles they may encounter while pursuing their goals.” Harriet Leva has been involved in governance at Palisades schools for over 10 years. She describes herself as a “good listener and consensus builder” with organizational, analytical and writing skills. Jack Sutton, a local resident whose son graduated from Pali, considers the school “to be a community asset exceeding that of any other high school in the city.” As a lecturer/field coordinator in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and executive officer for Educational Outreach, he believes he can provide a valuable link to the resources available from UCLA. The next board meeting will be held at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 16, in the school library. The public is invited.

The word “juvies” reminds me of the kids I used to see in movies I watched in the 1950s. They were punks, messing around, acting tough in a world defined by the monotony of their lives and their wildly naive view of the future. Director Leslie Neale’s documentary “Juvies” is a blatantly clear, tragic look at teens who have committed crimes-anything from assault and battery to murder-for which they are tried and sentenced as adults. In her film, Neale sets out to tell the stories of 12 kids, each with his or her own set of circumstances, but all dealt a hopeless hand by the criminal justice system. The film will be presented at 7 p.m., Wednesday, March 3 at Mount St. Mary’s College in cooperation with Human Rights Watch. Neale, a Rustic Canyon resident, delivers a powerful and convincing treatise on the cruel treatment of children trapped in long prison sentences which one person in the film characterizes as a slow death. Juvenile Hall was established 100 years ago precisely because the state understood then that children and adults are different. Now, according to Neale, that system that was originally designed to protect them has failed. Youth tried in adult criminal courts face the same penalties as adults, including life without parole. While in prison, they receive little or no education, mental health treatment or rehabilitative programming. Neale cites studies that show one of the last areas to develop in adolescents is the ability to prevent impulsive behavior; that the frontal cortex of the brain-the portion that controls impulse and emotion and planning-is still maturing. And that one-half of those teens who commit crimes before 18 will never go on to commit another crime. “Juvies” is almost a prologue to Neale’s first film, “Road to Return,” which dealt with the successful return of ex-cons into society, and prompted a U.S. Senate bill that expanded funding for post-prison transitional programs in six more states. This new documentary came about as a result of Neale’s volunteer work at Central Juvenile Hall at Eastlake Center downtown, where she taught a video production class. In teaching the techniques of filmmaking, Neale instructed kids in interview skills and taught them how to use a camera, but she was completely naïve about the juvenile justice system. “I believed in the headlines,” Neale says. “Even the kids I knew had done horrendous things, the most evil, grievous crimes. At first I didn’t believe a lot of what the kids were telling me. But, I was amazed at their level of honesty and realized that there was a film here.” While working with the kids in Juvenile Hall, Neale watched helplessly as one by one they were sentenced and sent off to adult facilities with no hope for rehabilitation or reform. So she decided her film would follow 12 teens in Juvenile Hall on the uncertain road from trial to sentencing. “We stayed until everybody had been adjudicated, which amounted to four years.” It took an average of 18 months to bring the kids to trial, according to Neale, and in the case of one of the kids in the film-Anait-three years. In structuring the film, Neale focused on kids who represented oft-repeated scenarios.   Liz’s story is that of a child who after escaping from her sexually abusive father, was homeless, drug-addicted and eventually arrested at 15 for manslaughter. Duc suffered physical abuse from his traditional Vietnamese/Chinese father and was arrested for driving a car from which a gun was shot. Although no one was injured and Duc, 16, was not a member of a gang and had no priors, he received a sentence of 35 years to life. Anait was a 14-year-old Armenian immigrant who was naive and made stupid choices. Marya was born into a gang situation and shot her best friend who was sleeping with a boy from an opposite gang. Peter’s story is of a gifted pianist who was arrested at 17 for breaking and entering and assault with a deadly weapon and now faces 30 years in state prison. In order to support these stories, the filmmaker interviewed the kids’ parents, and when she could, the victims. “You have to know the families in order to tell a story,” Neale says. “Some critics say that it’s unethical to get close to these kids. I say it’s unethical not to be close to the kids.” In fact, Neale and associate producer Traci Odom have kept up a relationship with all the kids they highlight in the film. Interspersed with the teens’ stories are interviews with experts in juvenile justice and gangs and prosecutors. Former District Attorney Gil Garcetti even admits that sentences like the one Duc received-during Garcetti’s tenure as D.A.-are unfair and should never have happened. Neale is working with other advocates, including Juvenile Hall Catholic lay chaplain Javier Stauring, in trying to reform the juvenile justice system and sees “Juvies” as filling a hole in the advocacy movement. Neale, a former actress who grew up in Dallas and got a degree in film from the University of Texas, lives in Rustic Canyon with her husband John Densmore and 12-year-old son Luca. Densmore, an original and founding member of The Doors, is executive producer for both films and is a major supporter of Amnesty International Neale is actively supporting two bills introduced by State Sen. Sheila Kuehl that would provide sentencing relief and clarify the language about fitness hearings-the process by which a persecutor determines whether the teen will be tried in juvenile court or adult court depending on the seriousness of the crime. Neale concludes that the fact that more kids are being incarcerated despite the dramatic drop in juvenile crime rates represents the confluence of a number of factors. She points to the fear of our youth, exacerbated by the media, the increasing rise in gangs as a result of our failing education system, and zero tolerance. “We’re not understanding the gang issue. There are over 3,000 gangs in L.A. alone,” she says. Louis Yablonsky, sociology professor and gang expert at Cal State Northridge, says that “The law takes the position that even if you’re not in a gang, you must be affiliated. That’s just wrong. In all these neighborhoods, everyone knows everyone else, and only 3 percent are dangerous to their communities.” Despite the dramatic drop in juvenile crime rates, L.A. County continues to sentence hundreds of kids to decades, even life in prison, Neale says. “The question we have to ask is what is the ultimate cost to society of what we’re doing to juvenile offenders?” Palisadian Pam Bruns is organizing the March 3 screening for “Juvies,” part of the Second Annual Human Rights Film Festival at Mount St. Mary’s in the Little Theater on the Chalon Campus, north of Sunset off Bundy. Admission is free. The guest speakers will be Neale and Javier Stauring.

What happens in a real estate market where the demand greatly exceeds the supply, which is currently the case in Pacific Palisades? How does the lack of sufficient inventory affect the 300 real estate agents working this area? And what does it do to housing prices? Could it be we are in for a market “crash,” but in a way no one imagined? Just how low can the inventory go? What if there were no homes for sale in the Palisades? “Impossible!” was the overwhelming response of half-a-dozen local realtors contacted by the Palisadian-Post. However, they also said they never imagined inventory being as low as it is now. Currently, there are approximately 50 homes on the market in the Palisades, compared to 82 a year ago. Median price: $2.5 million. Over that price, “there is a five-to-six month supply of houses,” said Coldwell Banker’s Michael Edlen, who has been keeping statistics on the Palisades housing market since 1986. However, under that price, “we have less than a month of inventory at the current rate of sales. So we’re likely to continue to see multiple offers, especially under $2 million.” With housing inventory at a 20-year low, the Palisades real estate market has changed considerably in recent months. Dozens of buyers, many of whom are moving up and are able to pay all cash, find themselves participating in bidding wars in which houses are simply sold to the highest bidder. Traditional real estate evaluation tools, such as appraisals, are becoming skewed. So what does happen in this kind of auction-like frenzy if a property doesn’t appraise? “This market is moving so fast, appraisals have become as much an art as a science just to keep up with what’s going on out there, especially in multiple-offer situations,” Edlen said. “It is pretty hard for a property not to appraise if there are four buyers willing to pay over the asking price.” Now, if houses do fall out of escrow for any number of reasons, it only seems to make them more attractive to the next buyer, who may have already put in a backup offer. What does all this do to housing prices? “They’re just going to keep going up, as long as the inventory is low,” said Scott Gibson, who lives in the Highlands and is president of Coldwell Banker in Greater Los Angeles. “Part of the reason inventory is so low is because homeowners, many of whom have nowhere to go, are choosing to refinance and remodel rather than move. All this remodeling is a good thing because it adds value to the overall housing stock in the community.” Gibson, who recently told the Post that within five years “you won’t be able to buy a property under a million on the Westside,” also sees this market “as one of those rare times when it’s good for both buyers and sellers. Sellers because they can get top dollar and buyers because of continuing low interest rates. Owning property is still one of the best investments you can make.” Beverly Gold, who is also with Coldwell Banker and has lived in the Palisades since 1952, agrees. Having been involved in the sale of almost 90 percent of the homes in The Summit housing project in the Highlands, Gold said she has seen the properties she sold in 1997 “double in value” since then. She currently has five listings in the Palisades, three of which are in escrow. “Last week my $2.8-million listing in the Highlands sold in one day and my $2.9-million listing the week before sold in three days,” she said. How did Gold get so many coveted listings? She said she is in the enviable position of having created “an annuity for myself, having originally sold so many homes in The Summit. My clients are very loyal and call me when they are ready to move up or sell. I am very fortunate.” Anthony Marguleas, of A.M. Realty on Sunset, who deals exclusively with buyers, thinks that the decrease in inventory “will finally weed out a lot of agents in the area. Only the best ones will survive.” Randy Freeman agrees. “It will be the same as it has always been, with 20 percent of the agents around here doing the bulk of the business.” Freeman, an agent with Prudential John Aaroe who has worked in the Palisades for the last 13 years, feels that this market is preferable to the market a decade ago “when there was something like 278 houses on the market and no buyers!” Joan McGoohan, who manages DBL Realtors on Sunset, also prefers this frenzied market to the early 90’s real estate slump. “I remember when you couldn’t give away houses in the Huntington!” which is where she currently lives. “That’s when people were walking away from their homes because they were paying more for their house than it was worth. It was a dreadful time, for everyone. At least now, if people can’t find what they want, they can stay where they are. That’s primarily why there is such a lack of inventory.” As for the growing trend of homeowners being solicited directly by prospective buyers, McGoohan said that while she does not condone the practice, “I don’t blame them. How else are buyers going to find what they want?” John Closson, who lives here and is western regional manager for Prudential John Aaroe, believes that Palisadians will continue “to take advantage of the opportunity to trade up at a lower cost,” although the “fear of locating a suitable replacement property can be paralyzing.”