2 Years After Fire, School Still Without Cafeteria

The burned-out cafeteria and auditorium at Russell Elementary School in South Los Angeles is surrounded by piles of dirt, mounds of broken asphalt and large chunks of concrete. Sometimes men show up to work on the charred building. Sometimes it sits abandoned.

For more than two years, the cafeteria manager has had no cafeteria to manage. No big ovens. No counters. There has been no stage for school plays, no hall large enough for assemblies.

Every day, the women of the cafeteria staff manage to feed hundreds of students, nearly all of whom depend on the free breakfast and lunch program. In a crisp and well-organized production, the women use another school’s ovens to warm food, a golf cart to ferry it and their own determination to make it all work.

“The kids have still got to eat,” said cafeteria manager Linda Dinkins. “The kids are not going to suffer. They’re going to have a good nutritious meal as long as I’m here.”

The staff’s resolve stands in contrast to the actions of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has yet to repair or replace the facility damaged in an arson fire in July 1998.

Some see the unfinished work at Russell Elementary as an example of the unequal treatment received by schools in low-income neighborhoods. Past meetings with district officials produced new promises and explanations, but not what the campus needs most: a usable facility.

“There’s always miscalculations--something comes up, they’ve got to redo the plans, resubmit papers,” said Sandra Ramirez, a parent, teacher’s aide and school volunteer. “. . . I know for a fact, if we were living somewhere in the Westside, things would be different.”

Since March, the project has been mired in a dispute between the contractor and the architect, pushing the date for completion into 2001. Only about 10% of the work has been completed, district officials said.

“Once it got wrapped up in this dispute, things did not move forward as they should. There’s no good excuse for that, except to say it’s part of an old way of doing business here,” said Robert Buxbaum, the district’s interim general manager of the facilities division. “The problem was allowed to drag on.”

The burned building also housed the teachers’ lounge, teachers’ restrooms and the school auditorium.

Since the blaze, large assemblies for plays and musical performances have been impossible. Teachers complain there are not enough bathrooms for the staff. The current teachers’ lounge--a trailer--has no running water. A playground has been fenced off for construction-related uses. Students eat in a temporary lunch area.

Marta Burns, a kindergarten teacher, said the auditorium was a key element on campus and served as a community meeting place.

Ramirez has gathered signatures on a petition and sent letters to district and elected officials requesting “the same rights, services and respect as non-inner city schools.”

She has received one response. A district representative said he would keep her up to date on the project’s progress and informed her the school would receive a temporary lunch shelter.

After waiting so long, Ramirez had one more request: “Give it to me in writing.”

In the meantime, cafeteria workers try to minimize the effect on students.

“If I didn’t have the staff I have, it wouldn’t work,” Dinkins said. “My permanent staff has stuck it out.”

The school’s troubles started about 1 a.m. on July 21, 1998. That morning, fire officials awoke Dinkins to inform her that a fire had seriously damaged the cafeteria.

In the months that followed, work started, then stopped. Plans changed. Dates changed. Again and again.

District officials offered different dates and explanations.

The initial plan was to simply repair the fire damage. But architects, who started their work in September 1998, discovered the school’s kitchen was out of compliance with building codes, said Tom Ventura, deputy director for modernizing district facilities.

The kitchen would have to be demolished and rebuilt--which meant plans had to be drawn, reviewed and approved by the state--a process that took several months and was completed in July 1999, Ventura said.

The project was let out to bid. But in October, the low bidder petitioned to withdraw his bid because “of a clerical error” in his paperwork, Ventura said. District lawyers reviewed the petition and allowed the contractor to withdraw.

Another contractor received the contract in February 2000, Buxbaum said.

Construction started, but slowed when workers discovered old foundations that had to be removed. Changes had to be made to the plan, based on what was found, Buxbaum said.

By March, the contractor and the architects were disputing how much work the contract mandates that contractor do in the school auditorium.

Buxbaum said the district should have mediated the dispute sooner.

While that conflict simmered, the cafeteria staff became skilled at using a golf cart to prepare lunch.

Here’s how it works: Prepared breakfasts and lunches from Newman Nutrition Center, a district facility east of downtown Los Angeles, are sent to Drew Middle School, which is adjacent to Russell.

Well before each meal is served, a cafeteria worker hops into a green golf cart and heads to Drew. Wearing her white uniform and her white hair net, she drives her cart through a gate separating the two campuses, around Drew’s athletic field, onto the campus and to the school cafeteria, where she warms racks of meals in industrial-sized ovens.

Later, she piles as many of the warm meals as she can in her cart--tin containers for the hot foot, Styrofoam boxes for cold items. Then she drives back through Drew’s campus and around the athletic field to her waiting colleagues.

Rows of tables outside serve as a cafeteria counter. Classes of students wait in line for their meals. Cafeteria workers hand out hamburgers or chicken patties and French fries, milk and chocolate milk.

Meanwhile, the worker on the cart heads back to Drew to repeat the procedure until all the children have eaten. The year-round school enrolled 1,300 students during the 1999-2000 school year, with about two-thirds on campus on any given day. Nearly all of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches.

The children do not linger at the benches because another group of students waits behind them. Aides and older students wash the lunch tables for the next group.

“We do this well,” Burns said, looking out over tables of students eating lunch. “But because we do it well, that does not mean it should be put on us for three years.”

Even this well-executed plan cannot accommodate rainy days, or the days when the staff at Drew needs to use the ovens normally used by the Russell staff.

Without the auditorium, students at Russell miss out on cultural enrichment. The campus serves a neighborhood of children who may never see a play or live performance outside of school.

In recent days, after inquiries by The Times, district officials have started taking a closer look at the project. “This has been run up the chain of command,” Buxbaum said. “The project manager is getting a lot of support.”

Dinkins misses her kitchen but does not complain. She keeps her staff rallied and the children fed, trying to make the best of the situation until the problem is solved.

But some days she looks at the unfinished building and wonders, “If we weren’t making it work, would they have fixed it by now?”