COVER STORY : Crumbling Campuses : Mirroring a national picture, San Gabriel Valley schools are disintegrating from lack of funds for repairs. They try to cope by using community volunteers, but no monetary relief is in sight.

It wasn’t so much the sinkholes in one school’s field, one large enough to swallow a truck. Or the rats scurrying in the ceiling above a principal’s desk at another campus. Or the broken pipes in several schools’ bathrooms.

Something else stuck in Art Reynolds’ craw five years ago as he drove through Garvey Unified School District on his first day as facilities director: the missing letters on buildings that bore the school names.

Reynolds thought the names would be easy to fix until he found out there was no money to do so. So he did some artful rejiggering. Dan T. Williams Elementary School, for instance, became simply Williams School, so the missing letters in the first name wouldn’t stand out.

“I’d like to put the ‘Dan T.’ back, but it’s hard to justify” the expense, Reynolds said as he discussed his cash-strapped district, which includes parts of Rosemead, San Gabriel and Monterey Park.

At schools throughout the San Gabriel Valley, millions of dollars in building repairs and improvements are left unattended because of more pressing concerns, such as teachers’ salaries and textbooks. Nationwide, the story is the same. According to a February report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, the nation’s school buildings are in woeful condition, requiring about $112 billion for repairs and upgrades.

In the San Gabriel Valley, maintenance directors are forced to make grim choices with tight budgets and shrinking staffs: Replace the missing door from a bathroom stall at one school? Or fix the rock-stuffed toilet at another school?

With no relief in sight, schools are turning to volunteers or trying gamely to make do.

Each of the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District’s six high schools shut down some of their bathrooms to limit vandalism and other maintenance problems. At a South Pasadena elementary school, where there is no air conditioning, teachers carry water bottles to spray heat-flushed children.

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“We need everything from nails up to vehicles,” said Ralph Serrato, CQ maintenance supervisor at Mountain View School District in El Monte.

The state’s school building fund is empty. Lottery money cannot be used for school repairs. And, as cities become built out, school districts no longer can rely on a windfall from developers’ fees that are used for building or renovating schools.

Last year, voters defeated a statewide bond measure for school improvements. The next possible state bond election is 1996; meanwhile, school repair projects totaling $6 billion await funding in California.

On April 13, Bassett Unified School District--following the lead of districts statewide--passed a resolution in support of a statewide school bond issue. (Bassett’s repair and cleanup needs total $10 million. The district’s total budget is $36 million.)

Statewide, aging schools on shoestring budgets are forced to let things go until buildings crumble or roofs collapse, said Henry Heydt, the state Department of Education’s assistant director for school facilities planning. More than half of the state’s 60,000 public school buildings are more than 40 years old and in need of serious overhaul, he said. The longer the repairs go unattended, the more it costs to fix them.

“It’s a matter of how long you can make something last,” Heydt said. “You only start taking care of things that become life threatening.”

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In short, emergency needs come first. Then, federal and state mandates, such as seismic upgrades and disabled student access. Then, basic repairs.

This is the dirty little secret of many valley schools, educators say. Few people realize that campus buildings are in such sorry shape. That makes it hard for schools to persuade tax-weary voters to bail them out with bond issues, which must get two-thirds voter approval.

Even in a middle-class city such as South Pasadena, the schools are up against a skeptical public. Only 14% of the city’s 14,000 registered voters have children in the school district, said Supt. Leslie Adelson. Most voters who drive by the schools think the buildings look OK, save for a paint touch-up here or roof patch there, he said. But they have no idea what’s inside.

They don’t know that Arroyo Vista Elementary School’s toilets clog or flood daily. Or that Marengo Elementary School’s defective fire alarm system doesn’t meet safety standards. Or that at Monterey Hill Elementary School’s playground, the pavement is dangerously cracked and the play equipment is unsafe.

“Obviously, our first priority is the instructional program, but it gets to the point where the facilities compromise the quality of education we can get to those kids,” Adelson said.

In November, 1994, the district summed up its maintenance needs in an inch-thick report, estimating the repair bill at $31 million. (The district’s operating budget is $15.5 million.) Since then, the district has launched a public relations campaign, trying to gauge support for a possible local school bond issue. The school board is expected to decide whether to call for a bond election by June 30.

The district’s public relations campaign has included school tours, in which principals and others pointed out the damage; work days, in which volunteers signed up to help with simple repairs; and mailings to registered voters, asking for suggestions on how to tackle a long list of outlined improvements. Not just any registered voter--the district targeted those who voted in the last election, and sent them hand-addressed mailers.

On a recent afternoon, parent Robert Weaver craned his neck to look at the sagging metal roofing on a walkway at 60-year-old Arroyo Vista Elementary School, one of the oldest schools in Los Angeles County. Weaver, who has three children in South Pasadena schools, is chairman of the district’s Community Facilities Task Force, a group of parents and other volunteers who helped the district put together its public relations campaign.

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He frowned when he saw a half-moon-shaped hole, possibly the legacy of children who jump up and down on the roof.

“As a lawyer,” Weaver said, “I look at it as an enormous personal injury claim.”

In Room 13, Nancy Walters teaches a first-grade class in a portable building more than 25 years old that was meant to last a few years until funds opened up. But funds never opened up. She brings tape from home to patch the ripped carpet.

In another portable, teacher Virginia Harrington jokes about her classroom’s rotted wood door, with a hole big enough for mice to scurry through on their occasional visits. Her fourth-grade students say they have trouble concentrating because their classroom is in such bad shape.

“It’s dingy and stuff, and it doesn’t look clean,” complained Eric Bilitch, 10. “The lights flicker on and off, and it irritates my eyes.”

“It’s hard to listen to the teacher,” said Sam Galle, 9, who said the room’s fickle air conditioner is as loud as an airplane. “It’s distracting.”

Parents and community members are trying to chip in when they can. South Pasadena High School’s booster club raised hundreds of dollars through bingo games, enough to renovate the boys’ lockers and build new girls’ lockers. In Pasadena, the PTA organizes volunteer paint parties on campuses. In Monterey Park, a city official was so distressed at the condition of Monterey Vista Elementary School--where the principal came in on weekends to make repairs--that he offered the community’s help.

Earlier this year, city officials visited Monterey Vista to review an application for $5,000 of a $30,000 federal block grant that the city had decided to spend on schools in low-income neighborhoods. The school got the grant and caught the city’s eye.

“We realized that even with the grant money, there was so much more to be done,” said Roger J. Grody, the city’s housing and community development director.

Grody recommended the 69-year-old school for the city’s Christmas in April Project, a nationwide volunteer effort to repair run-down homes; in this case, city officials decided to expand the definition to include the school. On April 29, about 75 volunteers painted the entire school.

Such community efforts are the envy of Reynolds, facilities director in the Garvey District. It’s harder to stir civic pride for volunteer projects or a local bond issue in a district that covers three cities, he said.

“We struggle with the sense of community,” he said.

But even with volunteers, the effort would make little difference in the face of the district’s daunting backlog of building repairs. The district’s $30-million operating budget includes $848,000 for the maintenance department, including staff salaries; total repair and maintenance needs are estimated at $10 million.

In Pomona, district officials backed off from trying to take care of their repair backlog in one fell swoop. In 1991, they successfully put a $62.5-million bond issue before voters after a survey indicated that a $200-million issue--the amount needed for repairs--would be rejected.

Besides the bond money, the district also got $38 million in matching state funds, for a total of $100 million to spend on maintenance and modernization projects. The money went for such projects as painting, re-roofing, asbestos removal and installing air conditioning. Still, the money was not enough.

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Pomona’s school buildings are going downhill fast, the usual wear-and-tear compounded by overcrowding.

“With some of our old schools, it’s gum, baling wire and spit,” joked Edward F. Walsh, Pomona Unified School District’s administrative director of business services.

He added an afterthought: “And prayer.”

Since 1986, student enrollment has jumped nearly 28%. Philadelphia Elementary School, which is 16% over capacity, must schedule eight lunch periods to feed all its students. Restrooms, classrooms and playgrounds deteriorate quickly from the overuse. Sometimes, the heat and air conditioning units come on simultaneously or don’t work at all. Cupboards with broken latches don’t close. But teacher Kenneth Kegel said he has no choice but to push on.

“My kids are going to learn,” he said of his fifth- and sixth-graders. “I won’t make excuses for them because this school may have less.”