L.A. Unified urged to look at properties

Panel recommends school district hire experts to evaluate real estate holdings.

The Los Angeles school system’s vast real estate holdings cost millions of dollars a year to maintain, but they also present an opportunity, according to a task force studying the district.

Some properties could generate millions for the financially stretched district, concludes a report the task force released Monday. Many could be used better to serve students and their families.

“We’re recommending three things: Take a careful inventory, figure out how best to utilize these properties and engage the community along the way,” said Austin Beutner, co-chair of the L.A. Unified School District Advisory Task Force.

The task force’s primary recommendation is that L.A. Unified should hire real estate experts by the end of next month, who would complete an analysis by September.

The nation’s secondlargest school system owns 6,400 acres, an area larger than Santa Monica. Its holdings include 1,200 schools and centers, spread out over 710 miles and 31 municipalities. Also in its portfolio are vacant lots, administrative buildings, operation plants and parking lots.

“The district lacks a comprehensive strategy to manage these properties and utilize each asset at its highest and best use to support the district’s goals,” the report states.

Such goals include academic improvement and easing budget problems exacerbated by growing pension and health benefits costs and declining enrollment.

“This is not an appeal to sell anything,” Beutner said. “You need a plan first and have to have a much longer horizon than today’s crisis.”

The annual Los Angeles Marathon routinely draws more than 20,000 participants every year, many of them athletes from around the world.

The 26.2-mile race can be grueling for those in the best physical shape, but especially people who suffer from heart conditions or other physical ailments.

On Sunday, four out of 86 people treated, mostly runners, suffered potentially life-threatening medical problems that required immediate care, L.A. Fire Department Capt. Erik Scott said. Their conditions were not immediately known.

That doesn’t count individuals who visited medical tents along the marathon course, which stretched from downtown Los Angeles to the Santa Monica Pier. There were no deaths. In 2006, two runners died in the Los Angeles Marathon.

Raul Reyna, 53, a veteran LAPD detective, collapsed two miles from the finish line. It was his fifth marathon.

The other marathoner was Jim Leone, a 60-year-old retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy from St. George, Utah, who died of an apparent cardiac arrest after collapsing in the third mile.

Since those deaths, race officials have taken preventive steps by making defibrillators available and setting up more medical tents.

The marathon has had one other known death: William McKinney, a 59year-old runner from Altadena, who suffered a heart attack in 1990.