Catalina Island School to Reopen

After a three-week evacuation that tested the special flavor of life on Santa Catalina Island, Avalon’s only public school is scheduled to reopen today with the approval of state toxicologists who determined that lead contamination in the schoolyard poses no danger.

The 730 students at the K-12 Avalon School will stop receiving lessons in the boats, tents, churches and business boardrooms that have served as makeshift classrooms since traces of lead and dioxin were detected in the campus playground’s soil on Sept. 7.

“It’s been quite a challenge,” Avalon School Principal Howard Fineman said. “But the kids handled it great, and the entire island pulled together for us. It was a phenomenal rally of support.”

For some students, the evacuation and relocation proved an adventure. Third-graders were taught in a rocking 127-foot passenger ferry called Catalina Countess. High school students commuted 1 1/2 miles by shore boat to a wilderness church camp.

Avalon student Katie Herbst, 17, figured the whole experience will make for some particularly interesting yearbook inscriptions.

“We’re going to look back on all this like it was some sort of crazy dream,” she said. “Imagine sitting in classrooms with full ocean views, and going to lunch on the beach. Awesome.”

High School Students Celebrate With a Swim

On Tuesday, the high school students planned to celebrate their final day at the camp with a swim at the beach, just two yards away from the makeshift classrooms. “After that,” said student Dana Canby, 17, “we’ll jump into the shore boat and head back to Avalon for the last time.”

Long Beach Unified School District, which administers the campus, reports that it spent about $250,000 on overtime pay for staff over the past three weeks, the rental of temporary quarters and special barge shipments to the island of supplies such as food, tents, furniture, generators, portable toilets and bottled water. The district also transported a portable cafeteria originally bought as an addition to an earthquake-preparedness program.

“We pulled out all the stops in this emergency,” said school district spokesman Richard Van Der Laan. “Given that it’s a remote island, the arrangements were unavoidably unconventional.”

The contamination was discovered last month when construction crews dug trenches for new utility lines as part of a school renovation. The work apparently unearthed the ashes of what had been a community incinerator that operated before the school was built in 1924.

Thirty-five locations at the school were tested for lead and dioxin by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, which investigates all concentrations of lead higher than 255 parts per million.

A majority of those samples had levels of contamination that were below the level of health concern, said department spokeswoman Jeanne Garcia.

A few samples, however, had levels of potential concern. The worst lead contamination--2,700 parts per million--turned up on a portion of the playground behind the library building, Garcia said. The highest dioxin levels were found behind the elementary school building.

Pending further investigation, those outdoor areas will remain fenced, covered with a tarp and kept off-limits to school activities, district officials said.

No Immediate Health Risks Are Found

“After we have fully investigated, we will come up with a way of cleaning it all up,” Garcia said. “In the meantime, we have found no immediate health risks, which has been a primary concern of students and their parents.”

Reopening the school will be a relief for civic leaders such as Avalon City Manager Robert Clark.

“We’re all happy it wasn’t as severe a problem as some feared it would turn out to be,” said Clark, who has three children enrolled at the school.

Avalon is the island’s main tourist center and settlement, with 5,000 permanent residents. The other community, Two Harbors, has 100 or so citizens and a one-room schoolhouse run by Long Beach Unified for 14 elementary students.