Parents Hope to Put New Coat on a 65-Year-Old School : Burbank: Volunteer labor and donated paint could provide aging Washington Elementary with new colors inside and out.

Chris O’Neill says George Washington Elementary School has not changed much since she was a student there in the mid-1950s.

“It’s the same color, with probably the same paint,” said O’Neill, a parent and teacher’s aide at the Burbank school.

O’Neill and other parents hope to change that. They started a campaign Thursday to raise the money, materials and volunteers needed to repaint the school inside and out, a job that otherwise would cost about $200,000.

The school, built in 1926, “looks as if it rains too hard, the whole thing will crumble,” said Esteban Escobar, who has two sons at Washington. “Our goal is to have it painted within three months.”

Hard times have forced the Burbank Unified School District to forgo painting its schools, Supt. Arthur Pierce said. Volunteers and donations are being used to paint two other elementary schools in the district, he said, because “the only way we are going to get these schools painted is to have volunteers do it.”

With expenses growing faster than state subsidies, leaders of the 12,000-student district can barely afford to pay for classroom needs, Burbank school board member Audrey Hanson said. “The choice is between a fur coat and a cloth coat,” Hanson said. “We’ve had to take the cloth coat.”

Washington Principal Joan M. Baca said parents will do the work themselves and will ask businesses to cover the cost of supplies--still to be determined.

One parent, April Shaw, said children need to be proud of the way their school looks. “School is more than teachers and curriculum,” she said.

The first volunteer started work Thursday morning. Working on his own time, Michael Cooper, school district custodian supervisor, used a high-pressure water hose to knock off peeling exterior paint. “The district has three painters, but all they have time for is covering graffiti and patching holes,” Cooper said.

Fifth-grade teacher Bill Arthur, who has taught for 20 years at Washington, said he is pleased with the refurbishing. “My father was a contractor and built the original building,” he said.