Bond Funded Construction Projects At City College, School District Going Strong

By Tiffany Rider
Staff Writer

Thanks to bond measures passed by voters over the last 12 years, several key upgrades and new construction projects in the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) and at Long Beach Community College District (LBCCD) are near or have reached completion.

New schools and facilities at LBUSD are funded through Measure K and Measure A school bonds. Long Beach voters approved Measure K in November 2008, providing $1.2 billion plus matching state funds. Measure A was passed in April 1999, approving a $295 million bond issue for the district plus matching state funds as well.

According to Chris Eftychiou, public affairs director for LBUSD, the bond funding pays for classroom upgrades – including retrofitting for earthquake safety and handicapped accessibility – and the construction of new schools and school buildings.

Bond funds are also put toward restroom repairs, plumbing, roof and fire safety systems, lead paint and asbestos removal, vocational and technology classroom upgrades, energy efficiency improvements and after-school program expansion efforts. One main goal for constructing the new facilities is to reduce overcrowding, according to Eftychiou. The district plans to create smaller high schools that would reduce the gap in the number of teachers per student, providing more individualized attention.

Many students are currently learning in portable classrooms, and most of the local schools were built before 1970. The district is in need of upgrades, according to Mary Stanton, president of the Long Beach Board of Education. With the input of community members, students, teachers and other LBUSD staff in more than 200 meetings and after thousands of community surveys, a Facility Master Plan developed before the board of education asked voters to approve the bond measures.

Eftychiou said the district and its board sought a significant amount of community input before the bond measure request to keep with what parents and other residents of the district – which includes Long Beach, Signal Hill, Lakewood and Catalina Island – want their schools to look like.

“The bond measure is just another way we think of our city supporting the school district in what we’ve been able to do,” said Stanton. The Facility Master Plan in its entirety is online at www.lbschools.net.

According to Eftychiou, LBUSD has two new schools in the works – a middle school to open fall 2011 and a high school in fall 2012.

A new high school is to be built at 7025 E. Parkcrest St., the site of the former DeMille Middle School. The school closed at the end of the school year, and demolition is likely to begin this fall.

Early College Academic and Technical School (ECATS) is the first of many thematic schools to be constructed as part of the district’s Facility Master Plan. The focus of the school is to provide programs for students that expose them to academic and technical experiences through the district, regional occupational programs, coursework from Long Beach City College and California State University, Long Beach, and partnerships with local business. These program pathways include health/medical, law enforcement/legal services/forensics and engineering.

The small high school project, set to have 43 classrooms for a proposed enrollment of 1,080 students, is an effort to help alleviate high school overcrowding, according to Stanton.

“Some people have said ‘Why are you building new schools and tearing down a perfectly good school?’ Well, the population has shifted and the need for a small high school is great,” she said.

Many of the high schools in the district educate more than 4,000 students each year, according to Stanton. “To have a new site, starting fresh, beginning at the very bottom and building the school out the way we feel is necessary to meet new standards and new challenges is very good.”

The other school in the works is currently called New Middle School #1, to be built at 1951 Cherry Ave. in Signal Hill. According to Stanton, the need for a middle school in Signal Hill was at the request of residents who wanted to keep their students close by.

“Originally we had thought of building Alvarado [Elementary School] out to a K-8, but the site that we already owned down there on 23rd Street was a natural to build the middle school to relieve some of the overcrowding in the outside middle schools and also to allow the students to walk to school,” she said.

The 423,000-square-foot site will provide a learning space for 850 students in grades 6-8 with 31 classrooms, a library, a gymnasium, health office, multipurpose room and other facilities. Stanton again emphasized the need to bring facilities up to electrical codes and safety codes, which is much easier to do when building new compared to renovating or “rehabbing” the old.

“Being able to start fresh and build something that will have the capacity that is needed in schools from now to when I’m no longer around is really important,” she said.

The construction budget for the project is $38 million.

Community College District

LBCCD is currently in the second phase of its 2020 Unified Master Plan, available online at http://bondprogram.lbcc.edu/master_plan.htm. When the state passed Proposition 39, it allowed for Bond Measure E to be placed on the ballot in 2002.

Per requirements of Proposition 39, the Measure E bond program has a Citizens Oversight Committee that is updated quarterly on the status of all projects in the 2020 Plan as well as bond fund spending. The program is also subject to two annual audits, which help make sure funds are being properly allocated.

The initial passing of Measure E provided the college with access to $176 million. The college financed to get an additional $5 million and earned a significant amount in interest. The LBCCD Board of Trustees adopted the final 2020 Plan in August 2007, which determined how much funding was needed to upgrade and construct facilities.

Measure E went back to voters in 2008 for further funding and passed, allowing the college to have access to an additional $440 million to further implement its 2020 Plan.

“Our first one is almost entirely spent, but we’ve spent a significant amount of our second one too,” said Anne-Marie Gabel, vice president of Administrative Services at LBCC and an honorary governor of the LBCC Foundation. LBCC has spent $248,061,796 to date: $185,875,107 for the 2002 Measure E program and $62,186,689 for the 2008 Measure E program.

Since the inception of the Measure E bond projects, Gabel said LBCC has received an additional $56,579,185 in state funding for six projects. The projects include the Library and Learning Resource Center at the college’s Liberal Arts Campus (LAC), and the Child Development Center, Welding and Trades Building, Aviation and Automotive Building, Multidisciplinary Academic Building and a Library and Learning Resource Center at the Pacific Coast Campus (PCC).

Most recently, LAC saw the completion of its South Quad Complex, or Building T. Gabel said the building was first occupied in January of this year. Last year the Library and Learning Resource Center modernization and expansion project was completed at LAC as well.

The PCC saw its own brand new Library and Learning Resource Center as well as a Welding and Trades Building completed in the last year. Central plants on both campuses have been completed, which provide chilled water piped throughout campus facilities to run air conditioning units.

Top projects nearing completion according to Gabel are LAC’s parking structure and infrastructure projects. The parking facility is underway and slated to open in the fall of 2011. The infrastructure project includes replacing and updating all of the water pipes, putting in reclaimed water pipes, upgrading telecommunication and electrical lines and putting in the chilled water pipes to be able to connect all of the existing buildings to the central plant.

PCC is about a year away from beginning renovations on its fitness center, which provides two classrooms, an open area for aerobics, weightlifting and training, and a half basketball court outside the facility. Gabel said the modernization and renovation of PCC’s Multidisciplinary Academic Building includes a complete remodel of the four main buildings on campus. The project will likely begin in October.

In addition to Measure E funding, Gabel said LBCC has some projects that receive partial state funding, such as the Multidisciplinary Academic Building modernization. Certain project proposals are submitted to the state in a competitive process where projects from other community college districts throughout the state vie for available funding.

“We have received some funding for several of our projects that way, and we’re hoping to receive additional state funding in the future,” Gabel said. “But in order to do that it’s going to entail another statewide education bond.”

Gabel said the 2020 Plan outlines what projects would be used to apply for additional state funding and which wouldn’t.

“When we developed the 2020 Master Plan, it was with the intention of trying to qualify to receive state funds so that our bond dollars could go as far as possible,” she said.

The outline is contingent on future education bonds passing at the state level. Currently AB 220, a bill that would enact the Kindergarten-University Public Education Facilities Bond Act of 2010, is going through the state legislature. The act would then need to be approved by voters this November, and, if passed, would provide $6.1 billion in aid to school districts to construct and modernize buildings.

According to Gabel, as the bill currently exists, the total bond would be $6.1 billion with community colleges on the receiving end of $800 million. Of that, LBCCD could receive about $31 million.

In the AB 220 Assembly Bill Analysis provided by the state, Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell wrote, “A state school bond would play a strong role in stimulating the economy by creating jobs and enabling school districts to construct energy efficient, high performing ‘green’ schools designed for the 21st century learning environment. This will help the state to continue its efforts to meet the educational facilities needs of California and develop educational environments to better address the pernicious academic achievement gap.”

He continues that in November 2008 – the year Measure E passed for a second time – voters showed support for school facilities bonds proven by the 75 to 85 measures that were approved. “A new state bond will provide access to additional funds these schools need to build, renovate and repair school buildings.”