Your child is introduced to a variety of new experiences and encouraged to explore, manipulate, experiment and learn. Their goal is to help your child develop a positive self-image and the confidence to successfully proceed on his or her educational journey.
They accomplish these goals by providing your child with:
Highly-skilled, professional, education-degreed, caring teachers
A well-rounded curriculum
Quality educational materials in a modern classroom setting.
Children in all classrooms take part in our specialty classes, which include music, creative dramatics and physical education. Afternoon enrichment classes, available to children attending full days, include Spanish, safari club, science, arts crafts and journaling, gym and computers. Parents are encouraged to actively participate in the educational growth of their children. The Echo Park Parents Association is an active group that assists the school administrators with fundraising, family events and other school activities.

The centerpiece of Angel City is the angel tower and statue.  The tower will be 750 feet high and the angel statue will be an additional 350 feet on top.  This adds up to 116 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower.  The angel will be more than twice the size of the Statue of Liberty.  Plans include a concert hall, museums, galleries, cafes, nightclubs, and observation decks in the tower. They also plan for four hotels and other commercial buildings.  This all adds up to a major destination and “venue” for commuters and tourists.  It also means intolerable traffic for us along Glendale Blvd.  Obviously, this is a community-killer mega-development.

Transportation planning is crucial for us and also for Angel City.  The developer is quoted as saying he will pay for a feasibility study for a “magnetic-levitation” monorail system.  He wants to connect Angel City with the Music Center, Little Tokyo, Dodger Stadium, Staples Arena, the Coliseum and LAX.  But even if it’s feasible in theory, would it actually get built??  Who will pay for it??  Will it be in place and operating when Angel City opens for business??  Will the requirements of residential communities like Echo Park be a top priority??  Or, will L.A.’s traditional incompetence in transportation planning continue again here too??  So, we will all need to become political activists on local transportation, or Echo Park could be doomed.

Look up the article in the June 17, “99, L.A. Times, Section B, the Metro section.  They claim to have the money lined up.  The developer expresses great self-assurance even though the picture looks like a bizarre theme park.   The architectural style will be Gothic like Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  I’m not kidding.  I wish I was.

Besides working with the kids, we planned another Summer of Fun for our younger ones.  We started off by having a great and profitable weekend at the Lotus Festival.  So far we have been bowling, swimming, attended movies, had a few beach trips and even went fishing.  We really thought Josie caught a big one when they pulled out the hook and gigantic net.  Even though, it took a while to reel the fish in, the poor little halibut was thrown back into the sea (it was too small).  Oh well, she had a good fishing story to tell her friends and family.

One hot day, we went ice-skating.  Even Anna tried to slide around on the ice!  The kids loved ice-skating.  Along with the extra trips we plan in the summer, the kids still have to do homework, work in the computer lab and help keep the center clean.

The youth, along with their counselors are planning to hold a rummage sale to make money for a trip to Santa Barbara.  That will be the finale for the summer.  There are still a lot of trips and activities planned for the rest of the summer.  Some of these will include a trip to the Music Center, a tour of the train station and a ride on the blue line and hiking.  The kids really enjoy climbing hills, mountains, and just taking walks in the forests.

As part of the program, Echo Park and the other neighborhoods will be promoted in local and national travel and entertainment publications as well as in a series of colorful street banners. In addition, the convention bureau will also publish and distribute an Echo Park guide with a description of the neighborhood and a suggested itinerary. How about a paddle boat ride across the lake, followed by a shopping trip on Antique Row and then drinks at Les Freres Taix?

The convention bureau will rely on local Neighborhood Tour Organizations to come up with the itinerary and identify events–such as the Echo Park Arts Festival and The Cuban Festival–that would be of interest to visitors. Also, local organizers would be called upon to put together a guided tour for groups that express interest in exploring local historic sights or artist studios.

If you have any suggestions for stops on guided or self-guided tours, please contact Jesus Sanchez at (213) 250-4155 with your suggestions. Also, volunteers who are knowledgeable about the neighborhood are needed to lead small group tours.

The baseball game has been sponsored by the Echo Park Chamber of Commerce for many years. It is a great time to get together with friends and neigbors and enjoy a good old summer pastime. A portion of you $8 ticket price funds local activities such as the annual Holiday Parade.

Call EPIA at 323 -882-4835 to order your tickets. See you at the game.

It is boating, though, that has always captured the imagination of visitors to Echo Park. The original wood frame boathouse built in 1921 featured a functional watchtower and rented wooden canoes. It burned down later but by the mid1930s had been rebuilt in the popular Mission Revival style complete with arched windows and a clay tiled roof.

The lighthouse is now strictly for show and the canoes have been replaced with sleek, pedal-powered fiberglass boats, but the old-fashioned charm of boating on Echo Park Lake has changed little over the years.

(Excerpt from “Ghosts of Echo Park”. Only a few copies are left! Final orders will continue to be taken via the mail. Send $15.00 to Echo Park Publishing, P.O. Box 261021, LA 90026.)

It is difficult for the average person to appreciate the importance of trees. Trees benefit us by filtering tons of pollutants from the air, absorbing storm water runoff, insulating houses, and absorbing carbon which help limits global warming. Tree loss has been so gradual that most people have not realized how dramatic the decline of the number of trees has been. It is also surprising to learn that only 10 percent of urban trees are owned by cities–the rest are privately owned.

How can we preserve the remaining trees? Finding ways to discourage property owners from cutting down trees is one way. Adding more land to parks is another. The popularity of urban tree plantings is of course another. Teaching more people about the importance of keeping trees should be our goal. We must preserve existing trees, try to get homeowners to plant new trees, and continue with the effort to plant more trees on city property. These efforts will perhaps reverse the decades-long loss of urban trees. 

Join us on August 21 for the next Community Tree Care event. Meet in the Taix French Restaurant parking lot on Reservoir Street at 8:30 a.m. Bring some gloves and help us care for and nurture the trees that have been planted by our previous activities in the Echo Park community.

Hundreds of community organizations will participate.  There will be food, entertainment, and displays of city services as well as pet adoptions. 

The Festival will be held at two sites: L.A. Valley College in the San Fernando Valley (5800 Fulton Avenue) and Museum Row at Wilshire and Curson on the Miracle Mile (5801 Wilshire Blvd.). Parking is free at both locations.

For further information regarding festival participation, contact the Volunteer Bureau at (213) 485-6984 or 1-888-CARE-4-LA.

For this year”s festival, held on July 10 and 11, we didn”t just have a booth. Thanks to the artistic skills of Suzy Rogers, we had beads and butterflies, silks and satins to decorate out booth. After Suzy Rogers, aided by Steven Arthur decorated the booth on Saturday morning, the volunteers to man the booth starting arriving. 

Most people sign up for an hour or two each day. Some volunteer for both days. What do volunteers do while they”re at the booth” They tell people about our neighborhood. Everyone has a favorite topic. Some like the garden, some talk about how safe Echo Park is, some talk about our tree plantings. We must have done at least an OK job because 60 people signed up to hear more about our organization. Hopefully we”ll see them at future meetings, in fact we sent them postcard invitations to our August meeting.

Booths must be torn down and set up each day. Steven Arthur, who coordinated the event, and Lynn Barbé, his faithful sidekick, helped with that task. They claim its well worth it as they get to watch a fantastic fireworks show on Saturday show from a prime seat in the EPIA booth. 

Congratulations and many thanks to all volunteers who included Greg Altunian, Steven Arthur, Lynn Barbé, Steve Batte, Susan Borden, Maxine Cummings, Carmla Emanuele, Ron Emler, Alicia Francis, Chie Iseri, Helen Kano, Suzanne Kimbrough, Sophie Lewis, Elizabeth Maier, Isa-Kae Meksin, Barbara Neal, Becky Orona, Judy Oroshnik, Barbara Rausch, Jesus Sanchez. While an exhaustive survey of volunteers was not made, it seems that everyone had a good time and is ready for next years event,

The garden’s July 17 workday would never have been a success without Chris Arcudi, Susan Borden, James Cramer, Nichelle Harris, Erika Higgins, Al Renner, Illeana Ruiz, Jesus Sanchez, Barry Walker and David Zahniser. Every now and then we take some time to weed, water, prune, and mulch-mulch-mulch.  We cut back the native Salvia Cleveland, pinched the chrysanthemums back, and dead-headed the roses in preparation for the late summer weather.  We built new beds, and ended with a pleasant picnic. 

Collaboration has been very satisfying for the Echo Park Community Garden and three other community gardens nearby.  The city can help a little, but success comes to those who help each other.  The Solano Canyon Community Garden is getting underway and Al Renner, who helped us start and now is indispensable to us, has been hustling to get them underway with great success.  They built their own fence, have won two big grants and a few nice donations, and have done great work organizing the Solano Canyon Neighborhood.

The Rosewood Avenue Community Garden is just starting out with great help from Hays Witt of Councilmember Jackie Goldberg’s Office, and many others. Gardeners from Echo Park have been helping then design their garden.  In spring the Burlington Avenue Community Garden contemplated shutting the gate for the last time, but this summer they have too few plots for all the eager members.  Some Echo Park Gardeners, and many others, gardened over there and got the neighborhood re-excited about their garden.  You might have heard Rosewood’s Nola Mott interviewed on KCRW’s “Good Food” a few weeks ago.  On the web you can hear her by clicking HERE, and you can read about the Echo Park Community Garden in Kitchen Garden Magazine by clicking HERE.

The Echo Park Community Garden is at 2223 Sunset Boulevard, at the corner of Rosemont and Sunset.  The gate is open between 10:30 and 2:00 every Sunday (except holidays or when we’re tired), so come on up.  The Community Garden has no plots available as of this writing, but the waiting list is just four people long.  There are countless gardening opportunities. Everybody who likes to garden (or dig, cut wood, etc.) can participate, Call (213) 882-4835 for more information.