School project half done

Michael Miller

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District has reached the halfway

point of its Measure A school-modernization program, after two years

of renovations at 13 schools.

McCarthy Building Companies Inc., the construction manager for the

project, announced Tuesday that it had completed half of the

scheduled work and had spent just over 50% of the allocated funds.

The goal of the Measure A program, slated to end in January 2007, is

to renovate 28 Newport-Mesa campuses at a cost of $173.3 million.

“The program is on schedule,” said Supt. Robert Barbot. “We feel

very good about it. The bottom line is that we’re getting facilities

safer and cleaner. It’s also a better learning environment for kids,

and that was the whole purpose of doing this.”

Barbot estimated that the project was slightly ahead of schedule,

since he expected the second half of construction to go more smoothly

than the first. When the district began Measure A work in March 2003,

it struggled with some sites, particularly Harbor View Elementary,

which suffered from dry rot and termite problems and had to have its

completion date extended.

“Two years ago, it looked like a 50-year-old school that needed a

makeover,” said Harbor View Principal Mellissia Christensen. “It got

that makeover.”

Today, Harbor View -- along with Woodland, Kaiser, Newport

Heights, Mariners, Whittier, Davis, College Park, Killybrooke, Sonora

and Wilson elementary schools; Ensign Intermediate School and Back

Bay-Monte Vista Alternative Education Center -- has finished the

renewal process. The district is currently in the third group of

schools, which includes Costa Mesa and Newport Harbor high schools.

Kirk Bauermeister, assistant principal of Costa Mesa High, said

the Measure A work has not only renovated the school grounds but has

also boosted student morale.

“In some respects, it’s almost like having a new school,”

Bauermeister said. “We’ve been painted, gotten new carpet, new

bathrooms, new lighting. If you walk into a regular classroom, it

looks pretty much like a brand new one.

“The kids have been very receptive. We’ve seen a huge reduction in

littering and graffiti. When kids are in a place that they think

people care about, they treat it a lot better.”

The Measure A project began in June 2000, when voters passed a

$110-million bond to renovate 28 school sites in the Newport-Mesa

district. Soon after, the district added $2 million in deferred

maintenance funds and $61.3 million from eligibility in the

California State School Facilities Program, bringing the total budget

to $173.3 million.

The district identified 28 campuses -- all of them at least 25

years old -- that suffered from decay or outdated facilities and

divided them into four groups according to need. Newport Coast

Elementary School, which opened in 2001, was the only site not

covered under Measure A.

Paul Reed, Newport-Mesa’s assistant superintendent for business

services, said that if the district had surplus money at the end of

the project, it would go to fund renovations that the schools had not

been able to cover during the main phase of the work. Newport-Mesa

was unable, for example, to create new gymnasiums at Newport Harbor

High and TeWinkle Middle School, although Reed predicted that even

leftover funds would not cover those.

“We should end up with some money left,” he said. “If there’s

money left over, we’ll go back and try to do the same thing at every

school.”