CHATSWORTH : School Gets Surplus Hughes Equipment

Not everyone in the San Fernando Valley stands to lose when Hughes Aircraft Co. picks up and moves to Tucson next year, taking 1,900 jobs with it.

Chatsworth High School this week collected a load of surplus equipment from the aerospace manufacturing firm--mostly desks and computers from emptied Hughes offices.

Hughes employees helped stack about 20 desks, several dozen chairs, at least 30 computers and a handful of printers and calculators into the high school’s storage rooms this week after Principal Donna Smith called the firm to ask if Hughes’ move from Canoga Park would mean the company would try to unload surplus equipment.

“They were very cooperative . . . it’s very good for us,” she said.

Hughes surplus sales representative Mike Toomey said the firm routinely helps out high schools, churches and other nonprofit organizations with gifts of items, but has been particularly flush with surplus equipment since employees began cleaning out offices this year.

Smith said she feels bad for Hughes employees who may lose jobs or be forced to move because of the shift: “I feel like a scavenger here,” she said.

But she said Chatsworth High, which must absorb 900 new students next year as it makes the change from a three-year high school to a four-year school, is badly in need of furnishings and computers to fill extra classrooms. The computers will probably be used in the counseling and administrative offices, while the desks will go into classrooms, she said.

Hughes is not the only corporation to take Smith up on her request for surplus goods. Syncor International of Chatsworth also donated large quantities of paper and office supplies.

Toomey said it was gratifying to be able to help out the school.

“We were blown away. We had no idea of the condition of the school,” he said. “A lot of graffiti, the caged Coke machines. . . . I haven’t been to school since I left. It was a shock.”