And then there is the nagging little matter of a splitting headache geographically.
With the 300-student school in the city of Los Angeles and the church property in Culver City, St. Augustine officials have had to contend with separate governmental approving agencies.
Only One Side in a Rush
What we really are looking for is a hardship variance (from Los Angeles) for the school, Father Nolan said. But that seems unlikely now.
City Council candidate Mehaul OLeary, a member of the St. Augustine Building Committee, pleaded this week with the City Council of Culver City for a courtesy intervention with Los Angeles. But he, too, was stymied.
Old Age Causes Creaks
The two-story school on Clarington Street, built in the early 1950s, went up when both the Catholic Church and the world were in different places. In those early post-war years, Father Nolan recalled, 14 or 15 nuns staffed the school. Following the subsequent shrinking of the community of nuns in recent years, only one nun presently is on the St. Augustine staff.
The Church Hall, next door to the church itself, is the oldest building on the grounds, dating to the late 1920s.
But all of the structures are limping through older age, Father Nolan said, and they are badly in need of upgrading, some more than others.
Leaky pipes, cracks in walls and elsewhere are plaguing the school. We are doing repairs and maintenance as we go along, Father Nolan said.
Adults and Students Agree, for Once
As August wears on, this is beginning to look like one of those rarest of summers on the grounds of St. Augustine:
The adults, even more than the children, are hoping that the calendar slows up and Sept. 4 doesnt arrive.
Just yet anyway.
