Grim Conditions Greet Returning Pupils at School in Hollywood

At Gardner Elementary School in Hollywood, the school year started out much as it ended--with one long list of annoying problems.

There were eight toilets, two drinking fountains and one large wash basin for the nearly 500 students returning to school. There was no running water in the nurse’s room to wash cuts. Many of the classes were without books and other materials. The library was shut down. There were no buzzers or intercoms to communicate between classroom bungalows. No pay telephone on campus. And no heat for the winter.

These conditions and others have made school life a exercise in frustration for the students, teachers and parents at the school, which is in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Parents such as Judith Drury and Dan Brennan found out about the problems from their 7-year-old son, Dru. “My son came up to me and said he was washing his hands in the drinking fountain because the bathroom was broken,” Drury said. “I couldn’t believe it. It seems as if the district has another agenda besides the health, safety, welfare and education of our children.”

Asbestos Removal

The problems are related to a long-delayed $700,000 construction project to modernize Gardner’s 66-year-old main building by adding air conditioning, an elevator and various other minor improvements. The project was scheduled for completion a year ago, but the work was stalled for a time to remove asbestos insulation. Then the project was further bogged down by a series of delays, including arguments between the architect and the contractor, school officials said.

As a result, little work was accomplished over the summer when the school was empty. School officials estimated that the job will be completed in March, more than a year behind schedule.

Los Angeles school board member Alan Gershman, whose district includes the school, said that the project has been plagued by “a lot of bureaucratic red tape and mumbo jumbo.”

“I was out there twice last spring, gritting my teeth and complaining about what was happening, and the situation has gotten worse,” he said. “The ideal would be to close the place down and take the kids to another school temporarily while the work is being done, but that is not possible. There is no place to put them.”

Instead of closing the school, enrollment actually increased when the district bused in more than 60 children from overcrowded schools, a move which infuriated teachers.

“They just dumped on us,” said Sandra Weininger, a teacher who has 33 students and no aide to help. “We are not able to teach anymore. We are just trying to maintain control. There is constant disruption. The dirt, the dust and the (construction) noise is one more jarring thrust making it difficult to be effective.”

Weininger teaches in a classroom bungalow on the cramped playground, where several classrooms were relocated in September when the main building was closed to allow workers to complete the construction job. At the time, only two permanent bathrooms with four toilets for boys and four for girls were in use in a wing that was built in 1977.

In response to complaints, school officials reopened two bathrooms, turned on additional water fountains and agreed to truck in bottled water. A noontime aide was promised to keep children away from the construction site. And 10 portable toilets were placed on the playground until a boys’ bathroom could be reopened in the main building.

Parents Upset

But the presence of portable toilets angered parents, who said they were unsafe and unsanitary and demanded their removal.

“The problem with the portable potties is that they are hot and unsanitary,” said Joan Pringle, Gardner’s PTA president. She said that children have been playing with the units, locking some children inside and opening the doors on others. “It’s demoralizing; I told my children not to use them.”

School officials said that legally they cannot remove the portable toilets until another boys’ bathroom is completed in about a month. In addition to complaints about the toilets, parents have also complained about other problems on the campus, including safety. “There was no one guarding the construction site to make sure that a child didn’t wander in and fall down the elevator shaft,” Pringle said. The school was cited twice by fire marshals for not having adequate barricades.

Even moving from the building to the bungalows was frustrating. The movers the district sent to relocate the classrooms refused to pack boxes. “They said they only were going to move boxes; they weren’t there to pack,” said Marta Acosta, Gardner’s principal, who ended up packing 150 boxes of books herself. Parents and teachers helped pack boxes, but many supplies remain in boxes. The library books were never moved.

Poor Communication

Mel Ross, who directs the district’s construction inspection branch, said: “Any time you have construction at a crowded facility, it’s a bear.” Ross said the delays in construction have been caused by poor communication between Levin Construction Co. and the architect, The Tanzmann Associates.

“The problem is that the contractor is not actively pursuing his work,” said Virginia Tanzmann, the architect. “Rather than acting to advance the construction work, he is stretching it out by making excuses that he cannot do so, and he is trying to place the blame for his inactivity elsewhere.”

Harris E. Levin, who heads Levin Construction Co. of North Hollywood, refused to comment. “There are two sides to every story,” was all he would say when asked recently for an explanation of the delays. “I have been working with the district for 20 years, and that should speak for itself.”

To help speed up the project, the district hired an outside consulting firm to mediate disputes, said Dean Miyazaki, project manager for the district. When the consultant was unable to move the project along over the summer, the district brought in its own staff architect and project managers to work with the outside consultant.

“On any job you depend on individuals to cooperate,” Miyazaki said. “However, on this job the opposite happened. From the word go there was fighting over what was supposed to be done, whose responsibility it was, how much it would cost. It got so they (the architect and the contractor) refused to meet with each other, and nothing was being done.”

$100,000 in Changes

In the meantime, Miyazaki said, there have been more than $100,000 in changes on the project. The initial grant for the project included $600,000 in state money and $92,000 in district funds.

The contract with the construction firm called for a $500-a-day fine for unnecessary delays beyond 271 days allotted to complete the job. School officials said that a determination of whether the contractor has violated the agreement will be made after the job is completed, in keeping with standard district procedure.

In the meantime, construction has started again. Weininger hopes that the new spate of work will at least bring heat to her bungalow. “Last year they turned off the heat, and the children sat in my class shivering with scarfs and coats on,” she recalled. Some space heaters were provided but they were not effective, she said.

She said that this year she plans to make do. Instead of using the school library, she is taking her class to the nearest public library. She said there probably won’t be a Halloween parade this year. “The teachers don’t feel it’s safe,” she said.

Acosta seemed to sum up the feelings of many on the staff when she said, “This has been going on for a long time. We have learned to live with the problems, and that is the unfortunate part about it.”