Classrooms to Be Razed Years After They Are Judged Unsafe

For years, children at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School have been taught in dilapidated, unsafe portable classrooms despite a 15-year-old state order that school districts must renovate or abandon buildings that do not meet earthquake safety codes.

Earthquake code violations, safety deficiencies and other conditions at the school were documented in an engineering survey done three years ago by the district’s own architect and a structural engineer.

“There are many hazardous conditions” caused by rotting of the support beams, termite infestation and decay, said the report, which was written in 1987 and revised in 1988.

“Allegedly, children have fallen through the floor and teachers’ spiked heels have punctured holes in the floor,” the report said. Teachers reported that on hot days they sometimes had to move the children outside because termites began swarming out of the classroom walls, the report said. Further, the buildings were not anchored to the ground, as the state code requires, and thus could tip over in a strong earthquake.

The cafeteria--two portable buildings joined together--had only “marginal food equipment” and most of the nearly two dozen portables, the report said, had deteriorated too far to warrant renovation.

But it was only after learning that The Times had found the 3-year-old engineering report in the files of the state architect’s office that school district officials took action to remedy the situation. After a reporter began making inquiries about the report, trustees of the Compton Unified School District voted last month to replace the old portables with new ones.

Acting Supt. Elisa L. Sanchez made the proposal to replace the old portables to the trustees after a Times reporter asked her to comment on the engineering report.

Sanchez, who was appointed acting superintendent in January after former Supt. Ted D. Kimbrough became head of the Chicago public school system, said she had not been aware of the report.

Three trustees who responded to telephone calls from The Times said they did not know the report existed. Four trustees and district architect William Howell, who prepared the 1987 report, either declined comment or did not return phone calls. Kimbrough could not be reached for comment.

When the board voted to replace the old portables, there was virtually no discussion before or afterward. The only comment came from Trustee Kelvin D. Filer, who said he wanted an explanation from the staff on “why we are just finding out about the conditions in the classrooms over at Jefferson when, apparently, some sort of report was made in 1987.”

According to officials in the office of the state architect and the state Department of Education, Compton did the engineering report on Jefferson in order to document what state engineers had already told Compton unofficially --that a formal engineering survey would probably reveal that the school ought to be condemned. Administrators in the district asked the state engineers to look at the school, state officials said.

Michael Chambers, senior architect in the school facilities planning division of the Department of Education, said that Compton wanted the state to condemn the school so that the state would pay to replace it.

However, Chambers and other state officials said that the state cannot legally condemn a school building. Only a local school board can do that, they said. And once a district condemns a building as unsafe, it must move the children out or individual board members are liable for injuries, according to the state officials.

Jefferson, which lies in the city’s northeast corner, stands out as a particularly bad case in a district where all 35 schools are pitifully deteriorated and suffering from poor maintenance. The school, where 700 children were enrolled last year, is of indeterminate age; several school officials could not say when it opened or why it is made up predominantly of portable classrooms.

There are only four permanent classrooms at the school, meaning that the thousands of children who have attended the school over the years have spent most of their days in the old portables. Even the two restrooms are in portables.

Kenneth Flood, the administrator in the district recently assigned to oversee facilities and to handle the Jefferson problem, said district records indicate that the portables were moved to the site in the mid- to late-1960s.

However, people who have lived around it for years say the school was always composed largely of portable buildings.

“As far as I can remember, the bungalows have always been there,” said Joseph Ochoa, who moved to the neighborhood in 1956. He said he believes the bungalows are World War II vintage.

Shortly before school ended in June one teacher, eager to demonstrate the deterioration in her portable classroom, bounced up and down on the floor to show a visitor how badly it swayed and sagged. She used pliers to open and close her classroom windows because the cranks were broken off. There was a large hole in the bottom of her classroom door.

The Jefferson portables are not anchored to the ground and proper anchorage is a chief element in the earthquake safety codes that apply to portable classrooms.

Gil V. Evangelista, the private structural engineer who worked with Howell on the 1987 report, said in a recent telephone interview that if portable classrooms are not properly anchored, a strong quake can throw them off their foundations or tip them over.

Also, the walls installed to absorb the force of quakes or strong winds are rotting or did not meet state codes in the first place. A strong quake, Evangelista said, could rip those walls loose, causing other walls, the ceiling or the light fixtures to fall.

Although they do not meet earthquake safety codes, the portables did not suffer structural damage during the Whittier quake of October, 1987, according to Hector Contreras, vice principal at Jefferson.

Flood said he hopes to have new portables at Jefferson by the opening of school in September. The estimated cost for the new buildings is $1.1 million.

The district, which had been laying off employees in order to balance its budget, plans to purchase the new portables with money set aside 12 years ago for a central cafeteria kitchen that was never built.

To do that, the district needs permission from the State Allocation Board, to which the district is appealing.

The money originally came from the sale of a school site, according to G. Stafford Offerman, the district’s controller. The state originally paid for the school site, he said, so it gets to have a say in how the money is used.

Flood and Offerman are optimistic that the state board will allow the district to spend the kitchen money at Jefferson. “I just can’t see where they would deny us,” Offerman said.

Flood said the district does not know if its portables at other schools and its permanent buildings meet the earthquake safety codes, but said he will launch a study to find out.

The state does not regularly inspect school buildings for earthquake safety, except when permanent buildings are constructed and when portable classrooms are moved to a site. Although the state requires that school buildings meet earthquake safety codes, under state law the legal burden of keeping the schools up to code rests with local school trustees, according to Chambers and other state officials. Under the law, school trustees would be criminally liable if children were injured during an earthquake in a school that did not meet the safety code.

The Compton district owns 189 once-temporary buildings that have become permanent fixtures at various school sites.

At Roosevelt Middle School, which has 13 portables, there are several without foundations. One is used just for storage because its floor supports gave way. In others, the wooden window frames are nailed shut. Teachers say that was done to protect the children because the windows were falling into the classrooms.

At Dominguez High School, teachers recall the time a mole climbed into a classroom through one of the badly deteriorated floors. The district tried to paint over the mildew that was collecting on the sides of some of the Dominguez portables but it has eaten its way back through the paint, Flood said.