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California Officials Dispute Parent Claims that Coastside School Buildings Are Unsafe

[Source: The Oakland Tribune | September 11, 2009]

After months of last-minute building repairs, students filed into classrooms in the La Honda-Pescadero School District on Aug. 26 that school officials say comply with safety requirements and building codes. But documents provided to the Times by a concerned parent who is suing the district state that school buildings on all three campuses are in imminent danger of collapse.

School district officials dispute the value of the documents, which were prepared by the Zahn Group, a discredited former construction management firm now being sued by the school district for allegedly mismanaging contracts, construction procedures and project funding — actions which led the district to misspend approximately $2.5 million in local bond funds last year.

The documents, copies of a building roof analysis of several school structures in La Honda and Pescadero, were submitted to the state as part of an "extreme hardship" emergency funding application to replace the roofs on five buildings at three school campuses back in June 2007.

Former Superintendent Tim Beard signed off on all three applications, which describe the problems at each site in identical and dire terms.

"The roof is in danger of collapse which may result in injury or death to students and others within the building at the time of the cave in," it reads. "The water leaking through the roof has led to the development of mold which may be hazardous to the respiratory systems of students and other occupants within the building."

The application includes photographs as evidence of damage to the buildings, such as rotting plywood, roof patching and leaky skylights.

Pescadero resident Jeff Gananian, who is suing Beard (among others) at the school district for spending bond money "illegally," said he takes Beard's signature on the documents as evidence of their legitimacy.

"(The documents) show that Mr. Tim Beard, former Superintendent, signed under penalty of perjury ... that most of the important buildings on all three campuses have roofs that are in immediate danger of collapsing due to leakage, age, mold and electrical shortages. He stated under oath that they could kill or seriously injure students and other occupants. ... If these were any other buildings in California, they would have been red-tagged and padlocked," wrote Gananian in a letter sent to the school district, the Board of Supervisors, the California Department of Education, and the state attorney general.

Gananian filed suit against the district in April and has been fighting to remove his child from the school district. He did not return a call for comment.

The school district had a roofing expert and a structural engineer inspect each building in question last week after receiving Gananian's letter, according to interim Superintendent Dennis Dobbs. Neither found evidence that the structures were in danger of collapse or of a serious mold problem, although they did verify that the roofs on the classroom building and the gymnasium at La Honda Elementary School need to be replaced as quickly as possible.

"We wouldn't permit children in any facility that presented a safety or health threat to children," said Dobbs. The photos of water damage at La Honda Elementary, in particular, do not add up to a safety hazard, he said. "I think those are pictures that show it's time to replace the roof."

The documents submitted by the Zahn Group focus on replacing the roof on two Pescadero High School buildings (which have since been replaced); on the two buildings in question at La Honda Elementary; and on a former administration building at Pescadero Elementary School that was revamped over the summer and is now used to teach prekindergarten and kindergarten students.

The latter building showed no evidence of structural or roof damage when the experts from Greystone West, the current construction management firm, inspected it last week, according to Project Manager Todd Lee. The Division of the State Architect, which certified the school construction projects, did not identify any problems there either.

In fact, Lee noticed that the Zahn Group used the wrong model of modular classroom to describe the building at Pescadero Elementary, and got the year of construction wrong as well. This confirmed his sense that the applications were done in haste by the Zahn Group in order to obtain money from the state without concern for specifics. His suspicions were first aroused when he noticed that the Zahn Group had used identical language to describe the alleged problems at each school site.

"It almost appears as if the application (for Pescadero Elementary School) was based on another building and tweaked for this district. I felt that was a bogus application," said Lee.

There is nothing bogus about the need to replace the roof at La Honda Elementary, however.

"The roof has outlived its useful lifetime. There is some leaking. We're recommending some interim repairs and then to replace the roof as soon as they can afford to do so," he said.

The school district spent the summer playing catch-up on a number of construction and repair projects that were either overdue or out of compliance with health and safety codes, as identified by the Division of the State Architect.

A few improvements still await final approval, although Jean Holbrook, San Mateo County Superintendent of Schools, has maintained that they are close to being resolved and do not involve structural deficiencies.

Original Release

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