Cudahy School With Ooze in Playground to Reopen in Fall

A Cudahy elementary school that has been shut down for more than eight months because its playground is contaminated with petroleum waste is scheduled to reopen in the fall, Los Angeles school officials said.

The Los Angeles school board has approved plans to cover the playground at Park Avenue Elementary School with a layer of asphalt to prevent the sludge of petroleum chemical compounds from rising to the surface.

School officials hope to have the school reopened at the beginning of the school year in September, school board member Leticia Quezada said last week at a meeting of parents, teachers, residents and state and school officials.

Although the petroleum-contaminated soil and sludge will not be removed, parents, teachers and administrators said they are satisfied that the covering will protect the students. They said they are tired of waiting and want to get back to their own school.

The elementary school, at 8020 Park Ave., was closed last summer after parents and teachers raised concerns about health hazards associated with the tar-like petroleum sludge that appeared in tiny puddles on the surface of the asphalt playground.

Since then, Park Avenue students have been sent to either Teresa Hughes Elementary School or Clara Street Primary Center, which operate year-round. Administrators and parents said Park Avenue students who have been attending these schools, which were already overcrowded, have become like guests who have overstayed their welcome.

“We need to go back to our own school,” said parent Maria Castillo, who has three children diverted from Park Avenue. “We’re not wanted (at the other schools) and we don’t want to be there.”

Principal Jose Velasquez, who has been trying to keep track of his Park Avenue students, said the whole experience has been an administrative nightmare. “What’s important now is that we get back to our school,” he said.

According to an environmental report released in January, Park Avenue school was built on an old city dump that contained petroleum-contaminated soil and several pockets of tar-like petroleum sludge.

But the report by Angelo Bellomo, director of an environmental engineering firm that conducted a series of tests last November and December, concluded that students would not face any health hazards as long as they did not have prolonged contact with the sludge.