School Fix-Up : Santa Paula: Industrial-arts students return to classrooms after a $3-million renovation.

“Excellent,” Darren Fray exclaimed as he entered the newly painted auto shop at Santa Paula High School Tuesday morning.

“It’s a lot better,” the 14-year-old ninth-grader said as he inspected the remodeled wing that sports new restrooms and new electrical wiring and plumbing. “There’s a lot more room; the bathrooms are right inside and it’s not so cramped.”

Industrial-arts students are scheduled to move back into their classrooms today after school trustees spent $3.3 million renovating the first half of the Spanish mission-style campus.

Under the first phase of the renovation project, which began in January, 1990, classrooms in the science and industrial-arts wings were remodeled and repainted, asbestos was removed, water pipes were replaced and ceilings were repaired. The administration building was also redone.

The 180 industrial-arts students spent last semester in cramped portable classrooms.

“It’s pretty exciting,” Principal Bob Fisher said. The 86-year-old campus now features ramps for the handicapped, an elevator, and energy-saving thermostats and lights, among other improvements.

Students and teachers praised the refurbished campus, which had not been renovated since the 1930s.

“It was cheesy,” 15-year-old Sam Ary said of the school before the renovation began. “It was scummy. They cleaned it up.”

“It’s better than I had before,” said science teacher Wade Southwick, whose classroom received eight new lab tables, four of which feature gas, electricity and water lines. Science students moved into their classrooms last month.

“I started out with a concrete floor, a demonstration table that had nothing connected to it, and two electrical outlets,” Southwick said. “It taxed our imagination.”

Southwick was not the only one who had to stretch his teaching abilities to the limit. For those forced to leave classrooms undergoing renovation, teaching became more creative than ever.

“You can read a lot of books about woodworking,” instructor Mike Tsoutsouvas said.

“Now we can work on some wood,” Sam broke in excitedly.

The second phase of the renovation project is scheduled to start in June, 1993, Fisher said. Under the proposed project, which will cost an additional $4 million, the Union High School campus would be reconfigured, and 14 to 18 classrooms would replace temporary facilities, Fisher said. The baseball field would also be expanded to allow players to compete in varsity-level competition, and outdoor basketball, handball and volleyball courts would be added to the four-acre campus.

Two classrooms would be built at Renaissance continuation high school.

The district hopes to get 50% of the $4-million funding from the state, which school trustees would match by using part of a $5-million bond measure that local voters approved in June, 1990, said Tahir Ahad, director of fiscal operations for Santa Paula Union High School District.

School trustees primarily used state bonds to pay for the first renovation phase, Ahad said.