Work at School Called Dangerous
By Shirley Dang, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.
Oct. 4–Bulldozers and ABCs don’t mix, according to teachers and parents at Harding Elementary School in El Cerrito.
Swirls of dust have made children ill, they say, and construction crews regularly endanger the school’s 200 students by driving trucks, backhoes and other heavy equipment on campus during busy times such as dismissal and recess with few safeguards or warnings.
“The only barriers between the equipment and the students were caution tape and mesh that had fallen down,” said teacher Margaret Breeding. “The lack of management on this project is unacceptable.”
Harding parents, teachers and students formed a safety committee in August and took their complaints to the West Contra Costa school board Wednesday. The school started a $10.5 million renovation two years ago and is a year behind schedule.
Vince Kilmartin, an associate superintendent of operations, told the committee he would fix the problem by sending Lance Jackson, the district’s head construction manager from the Seville Group, Inc., to watch over the site.
The committee has met with Jackson before, members said.
“Promises are being made,” said mother Sharon Johnson. “They’re not being kept.”
Parents and staff members said they are tired of the mini-dust storms and the project’s slow progress, and, more significantly, what they called negligent behavior.
In one instance, a backhoe operator scooped up a pile of dirt and maneuvered it over a fence so that the material passed over the heads of students, Breeding said.
The first day of school, said mother Margaret Wolfe, a driver slammed into a basketball pole and speedily drove off.
“The driver left without seeing what he had hit,” Wolfe said. “If he can’t see a 15-foot pole, how will he see my 4-foot-tall child?”
Jackson apologized to the families.
“Why it happened is totally unexplainable,” Jackson said.
Other problems such as heavy dust simply stem from holding construction and classes simultaneously.
Parent Lesley LaVigne’s family doctor advised her to move her asthmatic son to a different school, she said, until the dust literally settles.
“It’s not a light thing,” LaVigne said, describing the whirls of dirt on campus. “It’s swirling.”
The outrage parents expressed was magnified by delays in completion. No problems with construction would exist, they said, if the school had been finished in summer as promised.
“We came back on the first day of school expecting a new school,” Johnson said, “and we’re sadly disappointed.”
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