Avalon Students Roughing It as Contamination Closes School

Third-graders are being taught on a docked boat, with some windows covered over to limit seasickness. Sixth-graders have taken refuge in temporary classrooms in tents, sweltering in this week’s heat wave and dodging hornets. High schoolers are commuting 1 1/2 miles by shore boat from Avalon to a church camp on an isolated part of Santa Catalina Island.

In a mixture of terrible disruption and unusual adventure, the 730 students at the island’s only public school have been moved from their campus for 2 1/2 weeks so far because of lead contamination in the playground soil.

The island’s traditional ingenuity in living 22 miles from the mainland is being challenged in new ways as officials await chemical tests to see whether the evacuation of the kindergarten-through-12th-grade school must continue.

Watching dozens of third-graders troop over a gangplank leading to the 127-foot red and white Catalina Countess, Avalon schools Principal Howard Fineman said, “It’s been quite an undertaking. But we’ve had a lot of community support, and teaching is happening. Catalina is a heck of a community. It really knows how to rally.”

So far, 68 students have been tested for toxic contamination, and all have shown no traces of it. Meanwhile, the Long Beach Unified School District, which runs the 77-year-old school, has spent $230,000 on the emergency, including the cost of shipping barge loads of school supplies and furniture, adding staffers’ hours and renting temporary quarters. A portable cafeteria, originally purchased as part of an earthquake-preparedness program, arrived by boat Saturday and now operates in the parking lot of Vons Express market in downtown Avalon.

“Whether it takes weeks or months, we’ll do whatever is necessary to make sure our youngsters are not exposed to hazards,” said Long Beach district spokesman Richard Van Der Laan. “As soon as we get the green light, we’ll move back in.”

After the Sept. 7 closure announcement, civic leaders found alternative classroom space in the city of 5,000 permanent residents, the island’s largest settlement and a major tourist spot. Those include conference rooms at the Catalina Country Club, banquet rooms at Tremont Hall and Avalon’s Riviera Room, a room at St. Catherine’s Catholic Church, a teen center at Community Church and the county interpretive center in Avalon Canyon.

Then there is the stately Catalina Countess, a passenger ferry owned by Catalina Classic Cruises that is now marked by a large banner over the bow that reads: “Avalon’s Third Grade Afloat.”

Inside, the 44 students worked at desks arranged between rows of ship windows, some of which are covered with brown butcher’s paper to block the rocking ocean views. On the same dock, scuba divers were testing their equipment.

“At first, 80% of our parents were concerned about equilibrium,” said third-grade teacher Jani Hall. “But we’ve given our students sea legs and they’re doing fine.”

Students reported mixed feelings about the change of scenery.

For Jennifer Clark, 7, the experience has been “a really exciting and fun adventure. To me, it’s not even that rocky.”

But classmate Erik Schuman, 8, said the boat “feels cold and dizzy and only a little fun.”

“After our first day on the boat,” he said, “my mother and father asked me if I threw up. I said no.”

Down the block, cafeteria supervisor Maui Hernandez was learning to operate the portable kitchen’s ovens while whipping up the first hot lunch the students have had since being forced off the school grounds: hot dogs.

All of the temporary classrooms have been stocked with cases of bottled water. But that was not enough to make conditions bearable for the 107 sixth- and seventh-graders assigned to four gray tents erected in a sweltering canyon just above town that is swarming with stinging insects.

The spacious tents, with ceilings about 8 feet high, were equipped with fans and yellow-jacket traps. Still, at least half a dozen children have been stung by hornets and bees over the last week, officials said. Each morning, custodians check the uneven rubber mat floors for rattlesnakes. They have not found any.

As his students fanned themselves with their assignment sheets and notebooks, seventh-grade teacher Lee Robison said, “I always thought I had a clunky classroom. Now, I can’t wait to get it back.”

“These tents are way too hot, too stuffy, too small, and there’s way too many hornets and bees around here,” said Semantha Erickson, 12. “It’s really hard to concentrate when you’re wiping sweat off your forehead and thinking about ice cream.”

It may be weeks, even months, before teachers and students are allowed to return to their regular classrooms. The school’s playground is now fenced off and signs warn: “Caution, Lead Hazard.”

During a recent trenching project to improve electrical service to the school, the contaminants were discovered in ashes underneath the playground’s pavement in an old incinerator site.

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control investigates all concentrations of lead higher than 255 parts per million. Laboratory tests of Avalon soil samples in the so-called “hot zone” yielded levels of up to 2,700 parts per million, said department spokeswoman Jeanne Garcia.

That level did not mandate evacuation, but school officials said they did not want to take any risks. Additional tests are being conducted on deeper soils under the school.

Excavation and removal of contaminated dirt is underway. State officials said 24 Dumpsters filled with dirt are expected to be shuttled by barge to the Port of Long Beach on Thursday and Friday. From there, they will be hauled by trucks to Kern County’s Kettleman Hills Landfill.

In the meantime, the Avalon Harbor Department has given the school district until Oct. 31 to find alternative quarters to the Catalina Countess because of the impending storm season.

“If it turns out that we have a long-term situation,” Fineman said, “then we’ll have to bring over portable classrooms and find a place with enough room to handle them.”

Among several sites under consideration is Avalon’s popular Field of Dreams soccer field, he said.

Victoria Johnson, whose 13-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter are students at the school, is trying to be patient.

“Initially, I kept both of my children home from school for three days,” she said. “I didn’t want to find out later that I’d exposed them to something bad.”

“Now, they seem to be enjoying the adjustments. My son takes the shore boat to and from class, which is all right with me as long as the weather is good.”

On Tuesday, however, 20-knot winds were propelling 2-foot swells just outside Avalon Harbor. As a result, what had been smooth, 20-minute trips for high schoolers to the church camp had become choppy, 45-minute voyages.

“Today, it was pretty rough; there was water coming in over the side,” Troy Oudin, 13, said shortly after arriving back in Avalon Harbor on Tuesday afternoon. “But hey, it was fun.”