SOUTH GATE : Odyssey High School Name Fit Too Well

Odyssey High School has been looking for a home for so long, officials can’t remember exactly when the search began.

After a wait that some say dated at least to 1978, the continuation school finally broke ground last week for a $2.7-million facility that will be a prototype for similar programs throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school should be ready for students in July, 1995.

The new Odyssey will be a “complete, modern, free, independent school” as well as the “vanguard for future continuation programs,” Rodger R. Friermuth, facilities project manager for the school district, told a crowd of about 50 who gathered for the groundbreaking.

The new facility will give the district a chance to “serve students with dignity,” said Willene Cooper, the school board community representative for the Southeast area who found the site for the school district. “It will be its own school, have its own identity, own integrity. It won’t be parked on the dark side of the (high) school.”

The 10,233-square-foot school at 6893 Dearborn St. will face the west side of South Gate High Adult School. The two-story structure, which took three years to design, will have six classrooms, twice as many as the current school. Students will enter classes through a courtyard set below a two-story atrium. Odyssey will have its own library, workrooms for teachers, and space for computer, kitchen and shop mechanics labs.

“With facilities for laboratories and a library, we can approach a mainstream environment for continuation students that will ease the transition coming into and leaving a continuation school,” said Bob Engel, teachers union representative at Odyssey.

By most accounts, Odyssey moved from South Gate High in the late ‘70s when more room was needed on campus for the burgeoning population. A proposal to build an addition for Odyssey on the front lawn of South Gate High was rejected when critics complained that the patchwork approach would destroy the school’s stately appearance.

Instead, Cooper, a critic of the addition, found empty classrooms at a nearby church and Odyssey moved, temporarily, off campus.

“They’ve been operating as this orphan program for more than 10 years,” Friermuth said.

While the district addressed other construction priorities, the state ran out of money for schools, Friermuth said. Odyssey blueprints were ready in 1990 but funding wasn’t available until a bond issue was passed in 1992.

But Friermuth’s explanation of the delay doesn’t satisfy Cooper.

“I feel we (the Southeast area) are a very definite low priority and always have been,” she said.

The delay meant crowded conditions and uncertainty for Odyssey’s 90 students, said principal Lupe Paramo. In fact, about 18 months ago, the school was nearly evicted from its leased site because the district hadn’t paid the $2,500 monthly rent for nearly a year, she said.

“I figured out that the delay was because we’re a continuation school so people think of us as less,” said Luis Batres, a 17-year-old senior. “When I heard (construction) was going forward, it made me feel good about the community and Odyssey as the place to be.”