REGION: Summer busy time for school maintenance crews

Districts work to complete projects while students are gone

By STACY BRANDT - Staff Writer | Friday, July 25, 2008 6:13 PM PDT ∞

NORTH COUNTY ---- While teachers and students are out on summer vacation, local school districts are using the time to work on a variety of maintenance and construction projects.

From Escondido to Oceanside, school maintenance crews and hired contractors are replacing carpeting, laying asphalt, repairing roofs and painting classrooms.

"It's the ideal time to do it," said Chuck Aaker, director of facilities, maintenance and operations for Carlsbad Unified School District.

Many projects can't be done with classes going on because of noise and safety concerns.

"Most of the work would be hugely disturbing to the educational process," said Jeff Geyer, maintenance manager with the Vista Unified School District. "It just doesn't work well when there are kids on campus."

The work usually is cheaper when the schools are empty as well, because the crews have fewer obstacles to work around.

Maintenance officials plan all year for the work that needs to be done over the summer.

Some districts that are working on big construction projects are also using the break to move forward on portions of the work that would be disruptive or more difficult if students were in class.

In Carlsbad, work is under way to put in 20 temporary classrooms at Carlsbad High School. The modular buildings will be used for classes while workers rebuild other parts of the 51-year-old campus.

Most of the classrooms were put in earlier this month. The rest are expected to be in before school starts on Aug. 27.

Also, crews are putting in a new central cooling plant on the campus over summer.

In Escondido, work started this month on independent-study learning centers at the three high schools.

Although the work won't be done until early next year, having empty campuses over the summer will allow workers to do more than they could have with students around, said Mike Wise, project manager for the Escondido Union High School District.

"It has really opened up the opportunity for us to aggressively address some things," he said.

District officials plan to get the noisiest work done before school starts Aug. 11 to minimize distractions during class, he said.

In eastern Oceanside, crews are moving forward with the magnet high school campus that the Vista Unified School District is building near the intersection of Highway 76 and Melrose.

Several classrooms are already in place at the 66-acre site, and workers are taking care of electrical and foundation work.

The district expects to open the school in August 2009.

Most of the big school projects across North County are being done by hired contractors, but the district's maintenance crews have also been keeping very busy over the break, doing plumbing, electrical or carpentry work, school officials said.

Crews are often extra-busy during the summer, not only because of the large projects list, but because maintenance workers want to squeeze in vacation time while their kids are out of school, maintenance officials said.

As hard as they work over the summer, there's always more to do, Geyer said.

Some of the less-important projects end up being delayed until the following summer or one of the schools' shorter breaks, he said. Vista Unified's schedule for next summer is already starting to fill up, Geyer said.

"There's never enough time, never enough hands, never enough money to do everything we want to do," he said.

Contact staff writer Stacy Brandt at (760) 901-4009 or sbrandt@nctimes.com.