Joined by cheering community members and other stakeholders, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, LA Metro CEO Phillip A. Washington and LA City Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson hosted a “virtual ground breaking” recently for the Vermont Manchester Transit Priority Project, which is expected to dramatically transform two city blocks in South LA which have been vacant since the 1992 civil unrest.
After acquiring the property through eminent domain in 2018, LA County, Metro, and their partners are kicking off the first phase of the development: the SEED School of Los Angeles County (SEED LA), the state’s first public boarding high school. The second phase will include building 180 affordable apartments, a Metro Job and Innovation Center, and community-serving retail stores.
The inaugural class of SEED LA students will arrive in August 2022.
“This community has waited far too long for meaningful change,” said Ridley-Thomas. “But real change is finally here, with SEED LA to be followed by new homes, shops, a transit hub and job training opportunities. An empty lot that once represented chronic disinvestment is about to be transformed into a landmark of educational opportunity, economic development, and hope.”
“Our region’s transit system is undergoing a once-in-a-generation transformation—presenting an immense opportunity for Angelenos to take part in building a more connected, more sustainable, more prosperous future,” said LA Mayor and Metro Board Chair Eric Garcetti. “With Measure M, the Los Angeles area will see hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the decades ahead, and the SEED school will connect students to these possibilities and place them on a path to successful, long-lasting careers in the transportation industry.”
The SEED Foundation’s three boarding school campuses on the east coast graduate students who enroll in college at a rate of 94 percent and go on to complete college at nearly four times the national rate for comparable low-income, first-generation students.
“So why a public boarding school rather than college readiness, college access, and college completion?” asked Lesley Poole, CEO of the SEED Foundation. “Because SEED goes further. SEED’s five-day-a-week, 120-hour public boarding school exists to plant, water, and nurture what all humans deeply long to know, that we matter and that we belong. SEED exists to double down on what all parents say to their children, “You are beautiful, you can achieve all things, and you have a place and purpose in this world.”
