Jefferson School’s Rickety Portable Classrooms Razed : Compton: The flimsy structures had been used for 40 years by thousands of children. New portables will replace them.

A bulldozer systematically plowed and chomped its way along the rows of hut-like buildings at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School, turning the portable plywood classrooms into shallow heaps of kindling and twisted metal.

“Pretty tired, pretty tired,” demolition contractor John Hintz said of the aged portable buildings.

They had the consistency of Jell-O, he added.

Hintz’s crew spent four days last week leveling and carting away flimsy buildings that for 40 years served as classrooms for thousands of children on the northern edge of the city. There are just four permanent classrooms for Jefferson’s approximately 700 students.

Most of the children will still be assigned to portables when they show up for the start of school next month, but the portables will be new.

Unlike the termite-infested buildings that met the bulldozer last week, the new portables will meet all fire and earthquake safety codes. Their doors and windows will work. Their floors will be solid and carpeted, not sinking and unsteady from dry-rot damage.

Each portable will be air-conditioned, eliminating the need for teachers to scrounge for fans to keep pupils from wilting on the hot days. Utility wires will be installed underground, replacing low-hanging wires that had dangled above the closely packed rows of old classrooms.

The school’s vast asphalt play area will be patched; landscaping will be added.

The trustees of the Compton Unified School District recently approved $1.5-million to replace the old portables and upgrade the site.

The district’s acting superintendent, Elisa L. Sanchez, had recommended the action after inquiries from a Times reporter about a 3-year-old engineering report on Jefferson that said the portables had “many hazardous conditions,” and failed to meet state earthquake safety standards. The report was discovered by The Times in the files of the Office of the State Architect.

All school districts were ordered by the state at least 15 years ago to incorporate new earthquake safety standards or abandon school buildings--permanent or portable--that could not be brought up to code.

The Jefferson engineering study was conducted in 1987 and revised in 1988 by the district’s architect and a private structural engineer.

Several state architects and engineers who are familiar with the district’s schools have given the same account of how the report originated.

Compton school administrators ordered the study and sent it to the state in a bid to persuade state officials to condemn the buildings, according to several state architects and engineers familiar with the district’s operations.

But only local school trustees have the legal authority to condemn school buildings, and Compton officials never acted on the study, the state officials said.

Those trustees who responded to inquiries from The Times said that they know nothing about the engineering report and that they did not know Jefferson was in such bad shape.

All of the new portable classrooms will be in place by Sept. 7, four days before school is scheduled to open, said Kenneth Flood, the Compton administrator designated to oversee the project.

A new portable structure that will double as a cafeteria and auditorium is scheduled to be completed two weeks later, Flood said. The district will deliver meals to the school site until the cafeteria opens, he added.

In addition to the classrooms and cafeteria, Jefferson will get a new library, a new teachers lounge and new restrooms.

To pay for the new Jefferson facilities, the district is seeking permission to use more than $1 million from the sale 12 years ago of a surplus school site. The state had first authorized the district to use the money to build a central kitchen for the district’s food program, but the kitchen was never built. The State Allocation Board must approve the new use for the money.

However, Sanchez said, state officials have said they would welcome the idea.

“I feel confident that we are going to get approval,” she said.

Like many Jefferson parents, Jenine Arviso is delighted to see the old portables hit the dust. Two of her children will attend classes at Jefferson this year. Her oldest son just finished at Jefferson and will enter a middle school next month.

“I’m really glad they are coming down,” Arviso said, saying she used to worry about the safety of her children in the old portables. “It’s just too bad they had to wait so long to do it,” she said.

The new cafeteria-auditorium will be especially welcome for parents who consider the school the center of neighborhood activities. School programs, such as the Christmas pageant, had to held in the small library, which consisted of two portables patched together.

“Some of the parents couldn’t even sit in there and watch their kids participate,” Arviso said, because there was not enough space. “They had to sit outside.”