Parents See Red Over Lack of Paint at School

Construction workers who bolted together the Los Angeles Unified School District’s only all-steel school 26 years ago in Canoga Park predicted that its classrooms would end up being virtually maintenance-free.

They were right. Justice Street Elementary School has not received as much as a fresh coat of paint since its 1959 opening.

Not that it hasn’t needed it. Over the years, peeling paint has left huge strips of bare metal exposed and rusting on outside walls. The school’s janitor sweeps walkways daily to remove the paint flakes and chips.

The resulting abandoned-factory look has angered nearby homeowners. And it has outraged parents seeking to increase Justice Street School’s enrollment, which plummeted in the wake of the school district’s ill-fated busing program.

District Officials Balk

The parents claim that district officials have balked at putting the school on the painting list and have refused to permit them to buy paint and brushes and do it themselves. Instead, they claim, inner-city schools that are in far better condition are getting more attention.

“It’s appalling,” Jeff Mazur, a father of three who lives across the street from the school, said Thursday. “It’s what a coat of paint symbolizes. It shows that you don’t have to let things die.”

Keeping their neighborhood school alive and healthy is important to parents, who say the school system’s short mandatory desegregation program nearly killed Justice Street School. Its enrollment was 1,100 before West San Fernando Valley families began moving or placing their children in private schools to avoid busing. Attendance was 235 last semester.

“Justice Street’s appearance is not an inducement for people to send their children back to the local school,” Susan Pfeffer, the mother of two, said. “I can’t blame them. I know of people who were very interested in buying a house three blocks from here who took one look at the school and said ‘forget it.’ ”

Appearance Detrimental

Jerry Messenger, who has been Justice Street School’s office manager since it opened, said that some would-be returnees look at the school and assume that it is about to close. Nineteen underenrolled West Valley campuses have been shut down in the past three years.

“The school’s appearance keeps the rumors we’re closing alive,” Messenger said. “We’ve been on two closure study lists, but we try to reassure parents that we’re going to stay open.”

Once district officials decided to take Justice off the closure list, there was no money left to have it repainted.

“Parents use a lot of criteria to make decisions about schools,” said Herbert Anderson, Justice Street’s principal for the past four years. “Families in this area have more than one choice when it comes to where to send their children. And the appearance of a school has to have lot to do with its morale.”

Anderson said he, too, is eager for enrollment to increase. “We had eight teachers last year, and it’s hard to have flexibility with that size staff,” he said. “All our resources are tied to enrollment.”

To take up some of the slack, a Parents for Justice group was revived last year to raise money for the school. But Lynn Mazur, organization president, said that school-district policy blocked the expenditure of the money for paint.

She said the group turned to David Armor, newly elected West Valley school board member, for help when it learned that Justice Street was not on the district’s painting list for the new school year.

Armor said Thursday that he has asked for a district investigation, which could speed up the painting. He said he has “never seen a school in such terrible condition in terms of the condition of its paint.”

‘Not Going to Rest’

“I’m not going to rest until it is taken care of,” he said. “The physical condition of a building is instrumental to the morale of a community. How can you build up a community when you have a building in that condition?”

Margaret Scholl, director of maintenance for the school district, said that some touch-up painting will be ordered for the front of the school before the start of classes next month.

But she said district financial problems will delay the repainting of the whole campus. It is not among the 25 schools targeted for repainting, at a cost of $6.5 million, during the current fiscal year, which began July 1.

“We’ve got $20 million to spend this year on maintenance of all types,” Scholl said Thursday. “And we’ve got $300 million worth of projects identified to spend that on.

“That school had been on the list for painting, but the work was deferred because it was a candidate for closure.”

Budget Problems

The district tries to paint schools every 12 years, but campuses average a 23-year gap between new coats because of maintenance budget problems, Scholl said.

Compounding Justice Street’s problem is the school board’s goal of increasing teacher staffing at inner-city schools. That means that those campuses are the first to be spruced up to attract teachers, Scholl said.

She said that a study was started Thursday to rate the appearance and physical condition of all district schools.

Including the sandblasting of its steel walls, repainting the 11-classroom Justice Street School will cost about $45,000.

And what about the “economies in maintenance” originally promised by steel construction?

“I guess time has answered that,” Armor said.