Compton school projects suspended

It was supposed to be temporary -- the long white trailer on the school blacktop, sporting a lopsided California license plate and wired to a propane tank.

But a year later, the trailer’s eight wheels haven’t budged from McNair Elementary School in Compton. Inside, three kitchen workers still wash, slice and simmer food for the school’s 540 students. The school’s kitchen, a few steps from the makeshift one, sits in disrepair.

McNair’s $10,000-a-month trailer-turned-kitchen is among the most dramatic examples of construction delays that have vexed the Compton Unified School District since it launched an ambitious three-phase plan in 2002 to modernize 28 of its aging campuses and build two more.

The district began with $80 million in funding from a successful bond measure. Today, not even through its first phase, only three of the 28 projects are complete, and the district may have to borrow $20 million to $30 million to finish the others. The superintendent has suspended construction while the district figures out how to handle the funding shortfall.

Some parents and school board members are livid over the district’s management of the project. “It’s just unacceptable,” said Satra Zurita, who was elected a year ago to the school board.

Officials say the rising cost of construction, state money that never came through and numerous change-order requests caused funds to be used up faster than expected. Despite delays, the district has renovated about 1,500 classrooms, said Alvin Jenkins, director of facilities for Compton Unified.

But officials concede that the district probably tried to tackle too much at once without monitoring progress on each campus. “The problem with this district,” Compton Supt. Jesse Gonzales said, “is it went for quantity over quality.”

Two independent audits criticized aspects of the district’s handling of its finances and cited incomplete and subpar construction work. A November audit by the Los Angeles-based Del Terra Group found that renovations at many schools resulted in, among other things, poorly positioned thermostats, water pooling in light fixtures, disconnected fire alarm systems and rooftop air-conditioning units that were inadequately secured against earthquakes.

Officials say the audit was conducted before the contractors could complete their work. But they don’t dispute its findings.

As projects sat uncompleted for years, bungalows -- or in McNair’s case, a trailer -- that students and teachers believed to be temporary gradually have assumed an air of permanence.

District critics seized on the audit as evidence that officials fumbled the $80-million bond measure passed by the city in 2002 to begin construction.

“My property taxes have already gone up as a result of the bond,” fumed Alan Polee, whose 7-year-old son, Salan, is a second-grader at McNair. “What have they done with the money?”

The district broke ground on the undertaking with high hopes and a much-needed goal: refurbishing Compton’s decades-old campus facilities, many of which were falling apart.

Lighting at some schools was more than 50 years old; some sewer and electrical systems more than 100.

Problems soon arose. The $400 million that the district estimated for project costs in 1998 ballooned to $600 million six years later as a result of inflation and escalating construction costs, district officials said.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which has the largest campus construction program in the country, has experienced similar increases in building expenses, officials said. Construction bids have climbed an average of 27% a year since 2002, said Guy Mehula, the chief facilities executive for the district. Mehula called the growth in cost unprecedented.

In Compton, a slew of change orders -- requests to alter construction from the original renovation plans -- also bogged down work and chewed through funds.

The state approves each change order, which can be as simple as widening a doorframe by a couple of inches, and the school board approves funding -- a process that can take months. Until then, construction stops.

The district completed upgrades on three schools -- Whaley and Roosevelt middle schools and Centennial High School -- and opened one new elementary campus, Clinton. But about 18 months ago when it became apparent that the money was running out, Gonzales put the brakes on the other projects, including the construction of another elementary school.

The halt left many campus buildings in an awkward limbo between old and new.

At Washington Elementary, for example, the district renovated the inside of the administrative building and installed new tile floors, whiteboards and gleaming counters. But officials soon realized that in the rainy season, the old roof would leak.

The district didn’t have the money to fix the roof, so it has halted construction.

At McNair, while the campus kitchen was under construction, cafeteria workers at nearby Centennial made meals for the elementary school students. But when parents complained, the district agreed to pay for the rented trailer. Work on the kitchen ground to a halt about nine months ago because of changes to a work order on a new walk-in freezer.

On a recent morning, while students in bright red Santa hats sang “Up on the Housetop” in the cafeteria, three workers in the trailer prepared a lunch of spaghetti and garlic bread. It is so narrow inside that they had to turn sideways to pass one another.

Tommie Callegari, senior director for student nutrition services, said her staff can capably and safely serve students out of the trailer. “But I think we’d all like to be back in the kitchen,” she said.

The permanent kitchen was dark and empty and had a gaping hole in the middle of the floor. Dirt, pieces of rock and chunks of concrete were piled nearby. Plastic sheets draped the stainless steel counters, the cookware, even an old piano.

Polee, the McNair parent, echoed Callegari’s wish but with a frustrated edge in his voice after seeing the district sink months and millions of dollars into fixing a kitchen.

“It’s really no different from having a lunch wagon,” he said. “If it’s temporary, it’s OK. But they’ve turned it into something permanent.

“When they start a project,” he added, “they should finish it.”

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charles.proctor@latimes.com