Community Essay : Fill Empty Offices With Children at Their Work : With some ingenuity and a building code waiver, quake-damaged schools could reopen at business sites.

As repair crews make the rounds of nearly 150 quake-damaged schools, parents and teachers are wondering when, and even more significantly how, schools can get back to business.

Officials estimate school repairs from this latest disaster could take two years and cost $700 million--about a fifth of the school district’s annual budget. But even before the quake, the Los Angeles Unified School District faced an infrastructure crisis. Overcrowding is severe problem, and the district is in a precarious financial position.

While government bureaucrats divvy up rebuilding aid, many fear the schools will get short shrift. But a simple solution lies as close at hand as the nearest shopping mall or office building.

In Santa Ana, the school board will vote Wednesday on whether to give the go-ahead for construction of a new “space-saver” intermediate school to be located at Bristol Market Place mall. Space-saver schools are intended to economize on scarce urban property by sharing room with existing developments. Often using multi-level construction, space savers are also time savers, getting speedier approval for state funding, say school officials.

“This is a wonderful way to get a school that we desperately need, and we’re not having to condemn homes or business property to do it,” says Diane Thomas, spokeswoman for the Santa Ana Unified School District.

Santa Ana is not the only district seeking alternatives. Joining with local businesses, school districts in four states have found an innovative way to relieve their infrastructure shortage without capital costs. These districts are establishing public-private partnerships that put classrooms at the workplace. Students, primarily at elementary levels, go to classes in office buildings, shopping malls and business parks. The district continues to provide the teachers, the administration, school supplies and curriculum.

One of these experiments is taking place in Dade County, Fla., in areas hit hard by Hurricane Andrew. There, Patrick Dunn appreciated having his 5-year-old son Cory in a school at the airport where he worked so the two could be closer together after the fright of the hurricane. Recalls Dunn, “He was like Velcro to me. I would tell him, ‘Look, I’m just on the other side of the hill.’ It sort of eased the pain.”

Dade County school administrators estimate that the district saved about $250,000 for every classroom it has not had to build--about 15 in all. Partnerships between the district and several businesses mean the work-site schools are built at private, not public, expense.

Last year, the Hewlett-Packard Corp. became California’s first private company to house a public school, at its Santa Rosa plant.

Los Angeles has plenty of room for work-site schools. The National Assn. of Realtors reports office-vacancy rates of about 20% for metropolitan Los Angeles. Provided these buildings pass muster with seismic-safety inspectors, their halls could echo with the sounds of children instead of the sounds of silence.

Businesses already hosting a public school have reported a drop in absenteeism and turnover rates among employees with children enrolled in the on-site school. Other businesses claim they now have a happier, more productive, work force. Public schools located at or near work-sites may also get greater corporate support. At one school, a nearby hospital donates some basic health services to students. Other businesses have provided start-up grants to help remodel office suites into classrooms or buy portable classrooms to put on company grounds.

Parent involvement is one reason Santa Rosa school superintendent Lew Alsobrook initiated a school site at Hewlett-Packard. “If you can’t bring the parent to the school, then bring the school to the parent,” he says.

Ironically, the very legislation that was supposed to protect schools--and the children inside them--from seismic destruction now threatens to block educators at incapacitated schools from finding alternative facilities. The Field Act, passed in 1933 shortly after a devastating Long Beach earthquake, created a separate, more rigorous, building code for public school buildings. Over time, this act and the statewide Uniform Building Code, which governs most commercial and residential buildings, have grown closer together. Even so, commercial buildings cannot be used to house public schools. So while students and educators search for safe alternatives to quake-weakened schools or overcrowded classrooms, vacant office and commercial space goes begging. Legislators in Sacramento could do much to alleviate the current classroom crunch by granting a temporary Field Act waiver.

With businesses and schools working together, the task of rebuilding could be made a good deal easier.