Schools Rush to Complete Repair Work : Education: Districts use summer recess to fix earthquake damage and install portable classrooms for booming fall enrollments.

In Thousand Oaks, a crane hoists a huge air conditioner into the sky, allowing workers to fix a school roof damaged by the Northridge earthquake.

In Ventura, contractors connect new portable classrooms to school electrical and plumbing systems, painstakingly re-tile part of the Ventura High School pool and replace the fire alarms at Buena High School.

Across Ventura County, school districts are taking advantage of summer to repair and expand aging buildings.

“It’s the busiest time of the year for us because the students are not in class,” said Jorge Gutierrez, director of facilities maintenance and operation for the Ventura Unified School District. “The majority of our large school projects are done in the summer.”

School officials said this summer is busier than ever, as workers continue to fix earthquake damage and race to accommodate booming enrollments.

“It’s probably twice as busy as normal because of the earthquake work,” said Sean G. Corrigan, director of planning and facilities for the Conejo Valley Unified School District in Thousand Oaks.

The air conditioner lift there was part of a $235,000 project to repair the roof and foundation of Los Cerritos Intermediate School. The district will be reimbursed for the work by federal and state disaster assistance agencies, Corrigan said.

Workers at Thousand Oaks High School, Meadows elementary school, Glenwood elementary school and Madrona elementary school are repairing earthquake cracks in floors and walls this summer, Corrigan said.

In addition, ceiling tiles at those schools will be reinforced so they don’t fall down in the next quake, Corrigan said.

Madrona also got new air conditioning and a new parking lot this summer, Corrigan said.

Within the Oxnard Union High School District, major roof repairs to Adolfo Camarillo, Channel Islands and Hueneme high schools cost $150,000, Assistant Business Manager Richard W. Canaday said.

Canaday said the roof repairs were not linked to earthquake or flood damage, but are simply an attempt to improve aging buildings.

“Those schools are over 30 years old,” he said.

The Ventura Unified School District has spent about $1 million this summer on a variety of projects, Gutierrez said.

He said workers have removed asbestos ceilings and floor tiles on several campuses. They painted the outside of Loma Vista elementary school, installed portable restrooms at E.P. Foster, Sheridan Way, Portola and Junipero Serra elementary schools, and installed portable classrooms at Portola, Junipero Serra and Pierpont elementary schools.

Gutierrez said it takes a lot of work to add the modular classrooms and restrooms necessary to accommodate growing school enrollment.

“People think you just plop down the building [and] there it is,” he said. In fact, the site must be graded and the buildings connected to the school’s electrical, plumbing, intercom and fire alarm systems, Gutierrez said.

Workers also poured concrete sidewalks to connect the portable buildings to the rest of the school, he said.

In Simi Valley, workers are braving the summer heat to perform more than $3 million in improvements to air conditioning. New compressors are expected to be delivered by helicopter on Monday to Madera elementary school, Mountain View elementary school, Sequoia Junior High School and Royal High School, maintenance officials said.