Reconstructing the Past : Education: High school carpentry students build the first one-room schoolhouse in the Conejo Valley over again.

Randy Porter’s shop students at Newbury Park High School don’t have to fashion cabinets or build spice racks to get an A in his carpentry class.

All they have to do is to construct a historical landmark.

Decked out in leather carpentry belts, a dozen students last week began reconstructing Timber School, the first one-room schoolhouse in the Conejo Valley.

With each nail and board that is pieced together, students construct a past familiar to them only in faded photographs and dull history books.

“You become a part of history,” said junior Damon La Bleu, 16, pounding a nail as a seasoned carpenter would. Damon said he would like to study architecture when he goes to college.

“This is like learning a piece of the future too,” he said. “You’re learning how to build it with today’s technology.”

The project is a joint effort by the students and local community groups, both public and private, including two Rotary Clubs, the Conejo Valley parks and school districts and the city of Thousand Oaks. Groups have contributed about $27,500 to build the school.

The 768-square-foot building is about the size of a large garage. Once finished, it will stand next to the Stagecoach Inn Museum off Ventu Park Road.

Unlike Ventura County’s only remaining one-room schoolhouse in Santa Paula, Timber School had a life span of only 36 years and was destroyed half a century ago.

Built in 1888, it was named after Timberville, the original name of the Thousand Oaks community now called Newbury Park.

A bell that hung in its tower used to summon children from miles around to the school at Newbury and Kelly roads, said Doc Needham, president of the Newbury Park Rotary Club and one of the leaders of the reconstruction project.

In 1924, the building was replaced with a larger structure. Eventually, it was expanded to house the Timber School District offices and later Conejo Valley High School.

But school officials never gave away the bell that hung in the tower.

It is still stored at Cypress Elementary School, and a replica will be installed at the school when it is finished sometime next year, Needham said.

The Timber School reconstruction was originally supposed to be finished by the end of the current academic year. But heavy rains earlier this year made the soil too wet to build a foundation, Porter said.

After surveying the area, a committee of community and school officials decided that the soil needed to be compacted, a task that required permits from the city.

Porter said students have learned how adults maneuver through government red tape.

“The most important thing they’ve learned is the amount of paperwork involved in dealing with the government,” he said.

Judy Lyons, past president of the Conejo Valley Historical Society and a docent at the Stagecoach Inn Museum, said the school will be a point of interest for student tour groups.

Lyons has spent the past year hunting for items that will go inside the finished structure.

The furniture and fixtures for Timber School came from local antique stores and other schools. Officials at Santa Paula High School, for example, donated the original slate blackboards that were used in its turn-of-century classrooms, Lyons said.

By donating their time, members of Porter’s shop class have left a legacy for their own descendants, Lyons said.

“Chances are, if they live in this area, their children will come to these school tours,” she said.

Porter said the project has animated even bored students, but few needed encouragement to lend a hand on the project.

The high school teacher has encouraged his students to take notes and to keep newspaper photographs and clippings of the school as it progresses. Their portfolios are intended to help with their careers, whether or not they go to college.

Senior Wayne Flittner, 17, said he has enjoyed planning and building the school, even working on his off hours. Next year, after he graduates, he plans to return to help his fellow classmates finish the school.

Wayne said he does not yet know what he wants to do, but he would have an easy time showing his employers his portfolio of the project. He said he intends to bring his own children back to the schoolhouse someday.

“It’d be kind of cool to come back and say, ‘Look what I built, what we built,’ ” he said.