THOUSAND OAKS : School Districts Making Repairs to Campuses

For students in the Conejo and Simi Valley school districts, summer is a chance to get away from the classroom.

But for dozens of district workers, the warm summer months are the best time to get into vacant classrooms and repair the damage created by the Northridge earthquake.

“We just swoop in and work like crazy,” said Assistant Supt. Sarah Hart of the Conejo Valley Unified School District.

“There was some work that was done immediately after the earthquake,” she said. “But the bulk of the work was scheduled for this summer when the students weren’t there.”

Hart said many Thousand Oaks schools are still being inspected in a “line by line, room by room” inventory of what needs to be repaired.

“Every school in the district has some damage,” Hart said. “It’s just a matter of degree.”

Thousand Oaks High School, which received mainly cosmetic damage from the Jan. 17 quake, has about five restoration projects planned for this summer, including replacing broken windows, repainting buildings and dismantling an entire wing of temporary classrooms that were damaged.

In addition to about $1 million the Thousand Oaks district annually sets aside for school maintenance, Conejo Valley Unified anticipates needing another $1.5 million specifically for earthquake repairs, Hart said.

The district expects about 97% of that money will come from federal and state disaster relief funds.

In Simi Valley, district officials also hope to complete many of their earthquake repairs during the summer months.

Simi Valley High School was closed for nearly two months after the quake and students were forced to attend class at rival school Royal High. Damage estimates for Simi Valley High were about $3 million.