San Gabriel Valley : READING, WRITING AND REPLACING
West Covina Unified School District officials reopened Hollencrest Middle School after eight years today but it cost them almost $2 million to replace truckloads of missing supplies.
The school was virtually stripped bare after some enterprising district maintenance supervisors in the late 1980s, believing the school would never reopen, unofficially cannibalized everything from toilet-stall doors to chalkboards for other sites, said Supt. John Costello.
“Those employees aren’t with the district anymore,” he said.
The school board made the decision to reopen Hollencrest last January when if found itself faced with the prospect of 1,900 students at another middle school. Costello said the district has grown to about 8,600 students--meaning that another of its four mothballed schools could be reopened.
About 600 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders are set to arrive at the new Hollencrest this morning.
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