Schools moving to the next stage

Deirdre Newman

While renovations have delayed Harbor View Elementary’s school year a

week, construction at six other schools is on track, officials say.

Six of the seven schools in the first group under construction are

expected to be done by early November, said Tom Holtom, the

district’s representative for Measure A construction.

Holtom said the delays at Harbor View would not affect Measure A

funding at any other sites since each site has its own backup fund.

There is also an overall district contingency program, he said.

“The other projects are in no way jeopardized whatsoever,” Holtom

said. “We’re very comfortable with our contingencies and somewhat

relieved that only one of the seven schools was a problem. That’s a

pretty good batting average.”

The first group is comprised of six elementary schools -- Newport

Heights, Mariners, Harbor View, Kaiser, Woodland, Whittier -- and the

alternative high school, Monte Vista/Back Bay.

Work is performed according to priorities, with health and safety

being the first.

The first phase of construction, which is about to wrap up for all

the schools except Harbor View, included construction on classrooms

and the administrative areas and electrical work.

The next phase involves modernizing other classrooms on the school

sites after the students in those rooms have been moved into

temporary housing.

Delays at Harbor View started early in the year when the district

only received two bids on the project. Both were deemed too

expensive, so the district decided to ask for more bids. Without

changing the specifications in the design, the district ended up

saving half a million dollars, Holtom said.

Once construction started, major structural damage was found,

mainly from termites.

“Unfortunately, 50 years of nice, moist onshore breezes made it a

wonderful vacation spot for termites,” Holtom said. “They get up into

the structure and were eating for how many decades?”

When it was discovered that termites caused a lot of damage in the

windows of the administrative area, officials had to get approval

from the state architect for new windows. Again, they expected it to

come through faster than it did. It ended up taking two weeks to

obtain the approval, Holtom said.

Because of the delays with the construction, Harbor View will

start Sept. 8 instead of Tuesday.

Problems were discovered during construction at the other schools,

though not as vexing as those at Harbor View. At Newport Heights and

Mariners, crews found that back when the schools were built, plumbers

had installed their pipes horizontally by cutting out some of the

wood in the wall, Holtom said.

“We looked at that, and your shoulders slump, and we say, ‘We

didn’t expect that,’” Holtom said.

In case the Measure A budgets for each school are stretched thin,

each site has two contingency funds -- one for horizontal issues such

as roofing and one for vertical issues such as termites. Six of the

schools remained within their original budget, but Harbor View had to

dip into its contingency fund. That won’t affect the other schools,

Holtom said.

While construction on the first seven schools was supposed to be

completed in July, delays in approval of designs by the division of

state architect pushed everything back, Holtom said. The district

originally hoped to have the designs approved in 10 to 14 weeks, but

it turned into four to five months.

The only schools that were thrown off schedule were those in the

first group, Holton said. All the designs for the elementary schools

in the second group have already been approved. Temporary classrooms

and offices will be placed on these campuses next month, and

construction will start late this year.

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers Costa Mesa and may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.