Going to School Becomes an Exercise in Frustration

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

There were only 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 an 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.”

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.

A Year Behind Schedule

As a result, little work was accomplished over the summer when the school was empty. School officials estimate 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.”

Students Bused In

Instead of closing the school, enrollment actually increased when the district bused in more than 60 children from overcrowded schools, a move that 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 restrooms 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 restrooms, 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 restroom for boys could be reopened in the main building.

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