Broward County schools - a history os sick buildings

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Posted at 8:37 p.m. EDT Monday, June 8, 1998

Cleaner air, computers are on tap for schools

School Board votes on chief's plan today

By JACQUELINE CHARLES

Herald Staff Writer

Broward County schools might soon have more computers and less mold.

In his five-year capital improvement plan, Superintendent Petruzielo

is proposing to spend $200 million on technology upgrades and more than $40

million on getting mold and mildew out of school buildings. The money is

tucked into his five-year capital improvement plan, which the School Board

votes on today. Although the debate over the $1.5 billion plan has mainly

focused on whether to build new high schools in Weston and Coconut Creek,

the mold-and-mildew issue is significant.

By proposing to spend $44 million -- roughly the cost of a new high

school -- the district is acknowledging the scope of its mold-and-mildew

problem.

The dollars will provide improvements at 155 schools where teachers and

students have complained that the environment is making them sick.

It will go toward fixing leaks and cracks, and repairing air-conditioning

equipment.

Last November's grand-jury report on problems in the district's construction

problem called mold and mildew a serious concern and said the hasty

construction of schools was to blame.

Among the first schools at the front of the line to receive the new dollars:

Virginia Shuman Young Elementary, which would get $410,000. Nearly 300

parents at the school reported in a survey that their children suffer from

health problems they believe are related to the school's condition.

District officials visited every school in Broward to decide which are in

most dire need of mildew abatement.

Schools were ranked by the severity of their mildew problem, and those with

a milder case will have to wait for relief.

City High, for instance, is not scheduled for mildew abatement until

2000-2001.

That didn't sit well with board member Wasserman, whose district

includes the high school.

``We've got people going home early because they can't breathe,'' Wasserman

said.

Judith Hunt, director of Risk Management and Safety for the district, said

other schools are in worse shape than City.

The money proposed in the current plan will go toward ``a permanent fix'' of

the problem, Hunt assured the board.

The $200 million for computers will go toward putting PCs, printers and

teacher laptops in the classroom, and for wiring schools for the Internet.

In the past, the district has given high schools priority when deciding who

gets wired first. Most of those schools have received upgrades.

Now, Petruzielo is proposing that middle schools be given priority.

Posted at 8:22 p.m. EDT Friday, May 29, 1998

School plan: $1.46 billion over 5 years

Broward is scheduled to get 10 new schools

By BETH REINHARD and SHARI RUDAVSKY

Herald Staff Writers

Dillard High School would get its new performing arts center. Coral Springs

would see an abandoned mall transformed into a school. South Broward High

will be rebuilt. And more than 500 of Broward's oldest portables would be

sent to the scrap heap.

These are some of the highlights of the Broward School District's new

five-year plan, a blueprint for spending $1.46 billion.

District officials says that's $1 billion less than what is needed to get

all schools in shape and accommodate spiraling school enrollment.

``ly, we simply cannot afford to do everything,'' Superintendent

Petruzielo said as he unveiled the plan Friday. ``This is the best we can do

with the dollars available.''

Here's what some of the money would buy:

Broward would get 10 new schools, including five elementary, four middle and

a K-12 alternative school -- some already approved and under construction.

Nearly all of them will be in the western part of the county, with three in

Weston, one in Pembroke Pines, one in Miramar, one in Coconut Creek and one

in Plantation. The others are in Coral Springs, Lauderhill and Pompano

Beach.

Three new high schools proposed months ago are off the drawing board -- even

though Broward enrollment at the high school level is projected to increase

26 percent over five years.

The plan allocates $18.5 million to remodel and renovate the Coral Springs

Mall at University Drive and Sample Road and turn it into the North Area

Technical Academy for ninth- through 12th-graders interested in business and

marketing. Coral Springs would chip in an additional $4 million.

To relieve crowding, thousands of new classrooms will be built, with some of

the biggest expansions at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale (54) and

Western High School in Davie (48). Twenty-four-room additions will rise at

seven high schools: Boyd , Deerfield Beach, Flanagan, Miramar,

Piper, Planation and South Plantation.

In addition to building classrooms at Dillard, the $30.1 million allocated

to the school would pay for a new performing arts center with a full-size

auditorium and two-story building with music and band rooms.

The new arts center could assuage complaints about decrepit facilities for

students in the performing and visual arts magnet program. But a group of

magnet parents had held out hope that the five-year plan would include money

to build a stand-alone school with its own budget.

Scores of other existing schools also would see renovations. Among the

big-ticket items:

A new cafeteria, music room and playground at Bayview Elementary in Fort

Lauderdale.

A major makeover of Lake Forest Elementary in Pembroke Park.

A new cafeteria, offices, restrooms and closets at McNab Elementary in

Pompano Beach.

South Broward High is one of several schools that would be replaced under

the five-year plan.

More than 500 portables, all of them at least 20 years old, would be

discarded by 2003, according to the plan. (The district has a total of 2,086

portables.)

At Boyd High in Lauderdale Lakes, 700 of the 2,500 students attend

portable classrooms.

``The portables are covering the tennis courts. I'd like my tennis courts

back,'' Principal Gillespie said.

The plan would expand Broward's mold and mildew cleanup efforts to 157

schools. A grand jury report last year said mold and mildew, along with poor

design and construction, were causing widespread illness among students and

teachers. The schools that would get the most help are City High,

Country Isles Elementary in Weston, Dillard High, Taravella High in Coral

Springs, Riverside Elementary in Coral Springs and Parkway Middle in Fort

Lauderdale.

Marjory Stoneman High in Parkland, one of the schools featured in

the grand jury report because of its peeling walls, also is scheduled for a

face lift. But the stucco repairs are not scheduled until 2000-2001.

That news disturbed board member Darla . ``That means we have to look

at that disgusting school for another three years. That's embarrassing,''

she said.

The School Board will take up the construction plan at a meeting at 9:30

a.m. Tuesday at the district headquarters, 600 SE Third Ave., Fort

Lauderdale. The public gets to have its say at 7 that evening. Discussion of

the plan will continue at the board's meeting at 1 p.m. June 9.