L.A. Unified Details Plan for Campus Upgrading

The Los Angeles Unified School District promised Thursday to complete more than $1.2 billion worth of repair and improvement work by 2002 with new bond funds, beginning with more than 4,000 individual projects in the coming year.

Priorities for work ranging from painting to paving and intercoms to bleachers were set by the recently hired bond program manager based on a balancing of concerns as basic as safety and as political as regional parity.

Consequently, the new timeline calls for every one of the district’s nearly 900 schools and centers to receive some upgrade this year.

First-year work includes installing air conditioning at 167 campuses in the hottest areas of the city.

The windfall is the result of April’s election, in which Los Angeles voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition BB, committing themselves to borrowing $2.4 billion to fix aging facilities and build new ones. The ballot measure included the creation of a citizens oversight committee that is putting pressure on the Board of Education to move quickly.

Without counting technology work, for which figures are not yet available, the cluster of San Fernando Valley campuses that feed into Birmingham, Cleveland and Reseda high schools would receive the largest share of the five-year repair budget--nearly 7% of the total. That cluster is followed by the Westside group that includes Hamilton, Palisades and University high schools.

The clusters slated to receive the least for repairs and improvements--about 1% of the total--are in the southeast area of the district, including Huntington Park, Bell and South Gate high schools.

In the first year, nearly all scheduled projects fall into the health and safety category, which includes installing burglar alarms and security grilles over windows, as well as making long-delayed repairs such as replacing damaged floors and fences. Not included in the estimates is new construction, which is expected to cost an additional $900 million.

Construction management firm O’Brien Kreitzberg, the bond program manager, will parcel out the work to 10 other such firms known as project managers, which in turn will subcontract the jobs to specialists in each area.

As an incentive to economize, Ruth M. Hobbs, senior vice president with O’Brien, said the project managers that save the most money will be the first to get more work.

District officials said all schools had received the information this week and will have two weeks to review it and request adjustments.

The head of the bond oversight committee, mayoral appointee Steven Soboroff, said he hopes principals will scour the timelines for errors and potential alternatives. Soboroff is lobbying for schools to be awarded at least half of any savings they realize by finding cheaper solutions.

“That would provide plenty of incentive for the principals not just to take the easy way out, sign these [timelines] and send them back,” he said. “It would give them an incentive to go to their parents, their custodians, their teachers and see if there aren’t more important things to do first, if there aren’t some priorities we don’t understand, ways that we can save or do things faster.”

In addition, Soboroff said he wants to see the district create a more substantial series of bonuses and penalties to encourage work to be done faster, cheaper and better.

Soboroff has led the charge to expedite air conditioning of 296 schools for completion by next fall by separating that work from the regular timeline and championing an independent bid for the project from a joint venture of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and two energy companies.

However, air conditioning remained in Thursday’s formal schedule, timed out by a simple formula.

First up would be those schools where average summer temperatures are higher than 90 degrees and where less than a third of the classrooms are already air conditioned; second would come schools in those same hot areas that have more than a third of the rooms air conditioned; and last would be schools in areas where average summer temperatures fall below 90 degrees.

Hobbs compared the public pressure to make air conditioning the top priority to issues in other cities where her firm has handled similar management responsibilities. In the New York public schools, for instance, unsafe wiring became a cause celebre.

But she said meeting those demands has never before required a separate bidding process such as that advocated by Soboroff.

“With the 10 firms we have already, we could do the [air conditioning] in that same period of time,” she said.

Soboroff was skeptical, speculating that Hobbs and the district had singled out the “167 easiest projects.”

“I honestly don’t believe that having the system that’s in place install the air conditioning is cost-effective or time-effective,” he said.

Last week, Soboroff’s committee heard from nine of the 10 groups competing with the DWP proposal. District staff said it would choose the most viable among that group as early as today, then ask them to submit full proposals in a month.

Also on Thursday, the district released the breakdown of how work will be distributed among the 10 project management firms. Most of those firms have ties to the beleaguered Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a fact that has sparked calls for additional oversight of the bond money.

Jenkins, Gales & Martinez will take on the most regional clusters of schools, all in South-Central and East Los Angeles. A previous MTA audit concluded that the company had improperly billed the agency more than $200,000, including the costs of a country club membership and leases of luxury cars.

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School Repair Checklist

The Los Angeles Unified School District on Thursday released a timeline for repair and improvement projects to be funded by the $2.4-billion school bond, Proposition BB, approved by voters in April. The projects scheduled so far reprsent only about half the money because they do not include new construction.

First-Year Projects

Project description: General repairs*

Number of projects: 3,384

Project description: Security grills

Number of projects: 305

Project description: Air conditioning

Number of projects: 167

Project description: Technology wiring, alarms and intercoms

Number of projects: 142

Project description: Bleachers

Number of projects: 47

Project description: Lunch shelters

Number of projects: 43

Project description: Gym lockers

Number of projects: 33

Project description: Portable classrooms

Number of projects: 15

* Includes painting, lightning, playground resurfacing, plumbing, wiring, etc.

Regional Breakdown

Here are the estimated amounts to be spent in all schools feeding into these high schools over the next five years:

Cluster of schools: Birmingham/Cleveland/Reseda

$ amount: $58.7 million

% total: 6.7%

Cluster of schools: Hamilton/Palisades/University

$ amount: $54.4 million

% total: 6.2%

Cluster of schools: Venice/Westchester

$ amount: $42.7 million

% total: 4.8%

Cluster of schools: Carson/Banning

$ amount: $41.9 million

% total: 4.8%

Cluster of schools: Narbonne/San Pedro

$ amount: $40.9 million

% total: 4.7%

Cluster of schools: Gardena/Washington

$ amount: $40.8 million

% total: 4.6%

Cluster of schools: Eagle Rock/Franklin/Marshall

$ amount: $40.2 million

% total: 4.6%

Cluster of schools: Crenshaw/Dorsey

$ amount: $40.0 million

% total: 4.5%

Cluster of schools: North Hollywood/Polytechnic

$ amount: $39.1 million

% total: 4.4%

Cluster of schools: Lincoln/Wilson

$ amount: $38.3 million

% total: 4.4%

Cluster of schools: Grant/Van Nuys

$ amount: $37.1 million

% total: 4.2%

Cluster of schools: Kennedy/Monroe

$ amount: $34.9 million

% total: 4.0%

Cluster of schools: Canoga/El Camino/Taft

$ amount: $34.0 million

% total: 3.9%

Cluster of schools: Sylmar/Verdugo Hills

$ amount: $33.7 million

% total: 3.8%

Cluster of schools: Fairfax/Hollywood/Los Angeles

$ amount: $33.3 million

% total: 3.8%

Cluster of schools: San Fernando

$ amount: $33.0 million

% total: 3.8%

Cluster of schools: Chatsworth/Granada Hills

$ amount: $32.4 million

% total: 3.7%

Cluster of schools: Garfield

$ amount: $32.4 million

% total: 3.7%

Cluster of schools: Locke/Jordan

$ amount: $30.6 million

% total: 3.5%

Cluster of schools: Fremont

$ amount: $30.0 million

% total: 3.4%

Cluster of schools: Belmont

$ amount: $24.4 million

% total: 2.8%

Cluster of schools: Roosevelt

$ amount: $22.5 million

% total: 2.6%

Cluster of schools: Jefferson

$ amount: $17.8 million

% total: 2.0%

Cluster of schools: Manual Arts

$ amount: $15.9 million

% total: 1.8%

Cluster of schools: South Gate

$ amount: $12.0 million

% total: 1.4%

Cluster of schools: Bell

$ amount: $11.6 million

% total: 1.3%

Cluster of schools: Huntington Park

$ amount: $10.6 million

% total: 1/2%

NOTE: Totals do not include $370 million in technology projects because figures were not yet availble.

Source: Los Angeles Unified School District

*

Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this story.