Amid Dawdling, Schools Stew

While students and teachers sweat and try to concentrate, the heat wave melts the wax of an unlit candle in a high school in the San Fernando Valley, the hottest section of the Los Angeles Unified School District. It’s been 15 months since voters approved Proposition BB, a $2.4-billion local school bond measure for construction and repair. And air conditioning is what sold the bond proposal to many voters, especially in the Valley. What’s going on?

Since the April 1997 vote, only 16 air-conditioning projects have been completed. Some of the district-supervised jobs have suffered cost overruns, noise problems and environmental concerns. Relief for 54 of the district’s hottest schools, mostly in the Valley, has been postponed from an October deadline until January. Why?

Hot and bothered teachers and students should ask project managers from 3DI-O’Brien Kreitzberg Inc., the controversial construction management firm hired by the school district to oversee school bond repairs. One manager points to delays during negotiations with bidders seeking to do the whole job, as Pacific Gas & Electric is now. He says there was trouble finding special types of air-conditioning units and trouble getting suitable equipment from manufacturers. There’s no dearth of excuses.

It is not a problem unique to Los Angeles. In Orange County, where bond issues traditionally have a tough time passing, parents at one school had to raise money themselves for air conditioning and portable classrooms arrived without air conditioning in Huntington Beach last year.

As those in many Los Angeles schools bake, PG&E;, the private utility company, still has a deal before the Board of Education that it says would complete the air conditioning of 155 schools in 18 months. Steven Soboroff, chairman of the Proposition BB citizen oversight committee, is pushing the deal. So is Supt. Ruben Zacarias, in a rare display of leadership in a nonacademic area. The fast-track deal is estimated to cost 9% more than the district’s own slow-poke method. But Zacarias apparently sees this as a small price for getting the project done quickly and professionally, though an independent consultant has suggested that the price should be a bit lower.

The district and PG&E; should work out a tighter deal on price, one that the board can more easily approve. Then they should get on with the work, delayed far too long already. Perhaps until this project is completed, the air conditioning might be turned off at district headquarters in solidarity.