Fourth in a series
Re “Science Building, Here Comes Culver City”
Accelerating the bond sales “will be a major help in getting new facilities much earlier and much less costly than we had originally envisioned,” says Mike Reynolds, an assistant superintendent for the School District.
“Constriction costs have risen dramatically over the last couple of years. That is not changing. They will continue to rise.”
Putting up a largely pre-formed Science Building, between Culver City High School and the Middle School, is 50 percent of the reason for spending the next two rounds of the $106 million bond money ahead of schedule.
The other reason hardly is a fitting subject for this morning after weeks of daytime highs in the 50s and low 60s.
Air conditioning for every Culver City campus, even if it is a chilling thought.
“When we surveyed the community,” Mr. Reynolds said, “air conditioning was the overwhelming No. 1 priority.”
Mr. Reynolds said “a couple campuses have some degree of air conditioning. But there is no singular school that is totally air conditioned.”
Portable air conditioners “did a good job” last summer. “But we need to provide more robust air conditioning.”
When?
“We hope to have air conditioning in place on a lot of campuses by the start of next school year,” Mr. Reynolds said but did not promise.
Given the chronic air problems that students at El Marino Language School have had to tolerate from the nearby 405 Freeway, this campus will be a priority to finish before the next school year.
Over the summer, second-story classrooms will be another target for completion.
Taking El Marino’s close proximity to the pollution continuously bellowing off the 405 freeway, how is classroom air conditioning going to protect these young students’ lungs when they play and exercise outside the classroom?
I never could understand why parents whose children have bronchial or breathing difficulties attend El Marino, a school in such so close proximity to freeway? Why would they put their children’s health, secondary to an education?
Or why the school district just doesn’t decide to bite the bullet and move the school further away from the freeway, thereby, naturally solving the problem of concentrated pollution, now endemic to the El Marino site.
Could it be, that since El Marino is a school of choice and not a neighborhood school where attendance would be mandatory, it lets the school district off the hook to have to move the school to a much safer location downwind from the offending freeway?