School Safety Focus of L.A. Bond Drive

Dorothy Madson was in the middle of a discussion with her English class at San Fernando High School recently when a student suddenly collapsed in an epileptic seizure.

Instinctively, she grabbed the classroom phone that connects to the main office. It didn’t work. It hasn’t for years. Instead, she had to send a student racing to the nurse’s office.

Fortunately, the nurse’s office was near and help arrived within minutes. But the incident annoyed administrators who have had to tolerate the inoperable intercom system because the district can’t afford a new one.

“You’re talking about some problems here that are real safety concerns, namely our antiquated [intercom] system and the poor lighting throughout the campus,” said Barbara Garry, San Fernando High assistant principal.

“These have been things that have been deteriorating for years and each day it just gets worse.”

San Fernando High is but one of 899 steadily decaying schools, occupational centers and other buildings in the Los Angeles Unified School District with problems that range from nuisances such as chipping paint to the potential dangers of inoperable intercoms. The problems are physical ailments that add up to $2.4 billion in repairs the school district says it has been unable to cover in its $5-billion annual budget.

So, for the second time in five months, the district is asking voters April 8 to approve a $2.4-billion bond measure aimed at repairing and modernizing its schools. The measure failed to garner the necessary two-thirds vote in November, receiving 65.5% of the ballots cast, 1.16% shy of passage.

If Proposition BB passes this time, the district would mete out the money on the basis of urgency--a sagging roof in need of replacement, for instance--and also on the basis of how long a particular school’s request has been waiting.

Most of the district’s schools were built between 1940 and 1970 and are in a fast spiral of disrepair. The last time the district won voter approval for a bond was in 1971, shortly after the Sylmar earthquake.

Today, leaking roofs, cracks in playgrounds, inadequate classroom space, lack of air conditioning and antiquated electrical systems are among the most common problems, many of which have been exacerbated by harsh weather and subsequent earthquakes.

At Apperson Street elementary in Sunland, officials have become adept at catching rainwater in buckets. The school’s original roof from 1949 has been patched but never replaced and has become weaker from the heavy rains in December and January.

“We basically don’t know where the leaks are going to happen,” Apperson Principal Ann Carnes said. “I’ve been here four years and we’ve gone through this every year there’s a heavy rainstorm. . . . We basically just live with it.”

A pile of library books and textbooks at Apperson was destroyed in a January rainstorm when a section of the water-damaged ceiling gave way in a classroom, dropping at least two buckets’ worth of water on a teacher’s desk.

“It was like musical chairs in some of the classes because the kids were searching for seats that were dry,” said Rhonda Bradley, whose son attends Apperson. “My son has complained about having to walk through puddles in some of his classes.”

Then there’s the heat. It is especially bad in the San Fernando Valley, where temperatures are typically 10 degrees higher than the rest of the city. Air conditioning is sorely needed and for many schools has been unattainable.

“The lack of air conditioning really has an effect on student achievement,” said Shelly Rivlin Hollis, principal of Calvert Street elementary school in Woodland Hills. “Students simply can’t concentrate on their work and are often fatigued in class.

“You can walk into a classroom in January and find the children sitting up and working,” Hollis said. “You walk in a classroom in September when they should be excited because it’s the start of the year and they’re all lying on their desks fanning themselves.”

Even with three fans blowing in a classroom, temperatures have remained in the 90s during the warmer months, Hollis said. Students have coped by sipping ice water from plastic bottles they bring to class on such days. But the oppressively hot rooms prompted Hollis this academic year to discontinue summer school at Calvert until air conditioners are installed. The school’s booster club has been holding bake sales and other fund-raisers for the last year to raise the $60,000 necessary to purchase a central air-conditioning system for the school. To date they have collected $11,000.

“It just seems terribly unfair for students to have to learn under these conditions,” Hollis said.

When it opened in 1956, Calvert was a state-of-the-art school cited in a 15-minute Walt Disney film, “America the Beautiful,” which was played in the amusement park’s Circlevision Theater. In 1997, Calvert is using the same one-way intercom system and scant electrical outlets that were installed before the era of computers and televisions in classrooms.

Electrical wiring problems are even worse at Apperson elementary, which still uses the glass fuses it had when it opened in 1949 rather than modern circuit-breaker boxes.

“With technology and all the bells and whistles and computers and TVs, it’s tough to hook them up in the classrooms because the electrical circuitry can’t handle it,” said parent Alan McNary, whose son is a fourth-grader at the school.

Parents and teachers have resorted to running a heavy extension cord from a classroom that operates on a different circuit to the auditorium for special events such as Parents’ Night to avoid blowing a fuse.

“No one would ever buy a house that had these problems,” McNary said.

Tours of several campuses show that the requests are not frivolous.

At San Fernando High, weak fluorescent lights hanging from 20-foot-high ceilings lend hallways a dreary air. Water stains snake down classroom walls, while strips of paint are peeling. Hidden from view are asbestos and old plumbing. Over time, conditions have affected morale.

The students said they are worried about future classes if work isn’t done now.

“Most of us live in the community, and we’re bringing in a lot of our younger brothers and sisters to the school,” senior Carina Armenta said. “It’s sad to think that if Proposition BB doesn’t go through, that they may be dealing with the same stuff.”