Bond Won’t Give Schools Quick Relief From Heat

Despite the passage of Proposition BB and its emphasis on air-conditioned classrooms, students across the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District are going to endure at least one more sweltering summer because of the scope of repairs and a cumbersome approval process.

District officials say it will take up to four years to install central air conditioning at more than 300 schools from Woodland Hills to Watts to the Westside. But nearly half those campuses could feel relief in about a year, the officials say.

Among those topping the priority list are dozens of schools in the San Fernando Valley, where desert-like conditions send classroom temperatures soaring above 100 degrees.

Cooler schools are just one piece of an ambitious repair program the district is undertaking with $2.4 billion in Proposition BB funds. Already, work crews have fanned out to a handful of campuses--painting, fixing broken lights, installing security screens over windows.

But air conditioning has long headed the list of needs at many schools, particularly those in the Valley, and the issue played a central role in the success of the Proposition BB campaign this month.

District officials acknowledged that the public would be frustrated, but said there is little they can do to avoid the delays.

Installing air conditioning at hundreds of campuses, they say, is a complex undertaking that can drag out for more than a year and involves hiring architects and getting designs approved by the state before contractors can be hired.

Proposition BB advocates say they never promised air conditioning for schools by this summer. During their campaign, they emphasized that cool classrooms are a district priority, but they steered clear of deadlines.

“We told schools from the get-go that it was a three-to-five year process and that because of certain requirements such as bidding, contracting and design, it would be something that couldn’t be immediately fulfilled,” said Erik Nasarenko, a spokesman for Angelenos for Better Classrooms, the group that spearheaded the Proposition BB campaign.

Still, some parents expressed surprise and anger, upset at the prospect of having to send their children to school toting chilled bottles of water and juice.

“Who can learn in the heat?” asked Virginia Huntman, president of the Parkman Middle School PTA in Woodland Hills, which is spending $1,000 in privately raised funds to buy electric fans for classrooms. “The teachers are worn out by noon. Tempers get short. Adults wouldn’t put up with that at work.”

School district officials say they are moving as rapidly as possible to install air conditioning. The cash-strapped district, they say, did not initiate the process before Proposition BB passed for one simple reason: money.

Building air-conditioning systems for hundreds of schools would have meant raiding the coffers of other vital services--without a guarantee of funds to complete the work, they say. An identical bond measure had failed at the polls in November.

“Do you take money out of the classroom--away from assigning music teachers or counselors--and begin to put together designs without knowing whether a bond measure would pass?” asked Valley Board of Education member Julie Korenstein. “You can’t roll the dice.”

Korenstein, who called air conditioning a “public health priority,” said it is just one of many pressing needs at dilapidated campuses suffering from years of neglect.

The list of overdue repairs at Los Angeles-area schools reads like a tenement laundry list: rickety roofs, chipped paint falling from ceilings, faulty fire alarms, dim lighting. Many schools also need fuse boxes, wiring and other upgrades to accommodate new computers.

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In all, the district expects to complete 10,626 projects at 750 campuses within five years. The varied demands are being tabulated by district administrators, who expect to release a “master schedule” in the coming weeks that will prioritize repairs based partly on health and safety and partly on how long schools have had to wait to address their problems.

Approved by 71% of district voters April 8, the bond measure will cost property owners on average more than $60 annually in additional real estate taxes for the next 40 years.

District administrators say that many Valley schools are a priority because of a combination of hot temperatures and the lack of air conditioning. For schools to make the first-served list, they must have year-round schedules or average classroom temperatures of at least 90 degrees during the summer and air conditioning in a third or less of their classrooms. Still, school district officials cautioned that tangible results will not come overnight.

“It’s not like you wiggle your nose like ‘Bewitched’ and air conditioning is created,” Korenstein said. “It is very difficult to be critical of the process at its very beginning stages.”

Those coordinating the Proposition BB repairs say their efforts are hampered by a process dependent on the approval of state agencies and laws requiring that construction firms be hired through a public bidding process.

In the case of air conditioners, it takes as long as a year for architects to draw up plans and for the designs to be approved by the Division of the State Architect, an arm of the state Department of General Services that oversees school construction projects throughout California.

After that, another six to nine months typically pass as the district collects bids from contractors, chooses the firms, and the work is performed.

“There are several different steps we have to go through to get people on campuses . . . with hammers, nails, paintbrushes and screwdrivers,” said Ellen Morgan, a spokeswoman for the district’s school bond information office.

“I know the frustration of a community will be in not seeing something physically done right away.”

Despite the long process, three Valley high schools--Grant, Van Nuys and Sylmar--are scheduled to get their air conditioning this fall. Their designs were initiated when they were considering going to year-round schedules. District policy calls for air conditioning at year-round schools.

As it turned out, the trio of schools did not adopt year-round schedules, but their air conditioning plans were already in motion.

Five elementary schools--three in the Valley, one in the Crenshaw district and one in Baldwin Hills--are also scheduled to get air conditioning after Jan. 1, according to district officials who said they could not provide a specific timetable. Still, some parents said they have come to expect long delays.

“Big machinery moves slowly,” said Huntman, the PTA president. “Just to get a piano tuned for the music department takes weeks. If you just want something simple, it takes forever.”

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As they wait for air conditioning, parents and teachers are preparing for hot classrooms. Some teachers are dipping into their own pockets to buy electric fans or even thinking--reluctantly--of allowing students to fashion paper fans in class. At Monlux Elementary in North Hollywood, PTA President Mary Mannon is planning to send her 11-year-old son, Ryan, to school loaded with water bottles, containers of frozen juice, and shorts and shirts made of light cotton.

“That’s as cool as you can get,” Mannon said. “They’re not allowed to wear tank tops.”

At the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, a magnet school in West Los Angeles, parent Margaret Freiberg is going to donate fans to her two children’s classrooms, an annual summer ritual she began four years ago.

“It used to make me angry, but I guess it’s one of those things you get used to,” Freiberg said.

At Cleveland High School in Reseda, the very mention of air conditioning has become a psychic weapon of sorts against the heat.

The school--which assistant principal Allan Weiner says once registered 106 degrees in a classroom--expects to enjoy air-cooled rooms by next summer.

“Since the passage of BB, the morale of the teachers and the students has really skyrocketed,” Weiner said. “They know there is relief in site.”

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Weiner has another reason to celebrate: His school is one of the first in the district to undergo repairs.

In recent days, workers added lighting fixtures to the outdoor eating area and to the school’s grassy quad. On Friday, crews bolted wire-mesh security screens over 40 ground-floor windows in an effort to stop burglaries. Crooks broke into the ranch-style school four times last summer, stealing video equipment and loads of school sweatshirts and shorts, Weiner said.

School district officials have scoured the campus, documenting problems such as the dilapidated football bleachers and the broken intercom system.

“I give the district a lot of credit for taking the time to get this work done,” Weiner said. “They are taking care of us at Cleveland.”