Ten years after Measure BB passed in 2006, the $268 million bond obligated to improve the school district’s facilities has been applied to Malibu through a modernization project that began this past summer.
Most projects at Juan Cabrillo Elementary School have been completed, and massive changes have been planned for Malibu High School in the coming years. The high school’s campus is unchanged for now but that may change soon.
“Never be surprised at how it moves from looking like nothing to something really quickly,” Chief Operations Officer Carey Upton said.
The bulk of renovations are planned for Malibu High School.
The high school’s library and administration building will be demolished over the summer of 2017. A new version of the building will be constructed in its place with multiple floors featuring classrooms, science labs and special “green roofs” covered with grass and vegetation.
The campus middle school building will also be replaced using Grosse Pointe Construction, which uses refitted shipping containers to construct a new building.
The district intends to build a two-story, single-row of classrooms for the middle school building but is wary of getting caught up in delays if neighbors claim the height impedes their view.
“If it’s going to hang us up for a long period of time, we’re going to go back to a modernization plan,” Upton said.
A delay from litigation would not be unheard of for the district’s renovations. Plans to have Malibu High School’s parking lot illuminated by lights every day until 10:30 p.m. bogged the project in a deadlock with activist groups for two years.
The appeal process went on until Feb. 22 of this year, months before the district’s Department of State Architect’s permit expired. If the district’s permit had expired, the entire project would have been sent back to the drawing board.
“We never expected to be hung up for four years on the parking lot,” Upton said.
Department of State Architects have provided their own source of minor delays.
Whenever a building is submitted to architects, they’re required to ensure all plans are up to date with current building codes. These requirements can stall entire projects, no matter how small the required improvement might be.
An administration building at Juan Cabrillo was not up to code because a wall of a bathroom needed to be moved over half an inch in order to meet the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988.
The fire alarm system at Juan Cabrillo had to be redone because it did not specify to the fire department which exact room sent out an alert.
These last-minute code changes have been exasperated by the city’s request not to disturb school. “We can’t work on [renovations] except on Friday afternoons and weekends,” Upton said.
Despite these delays, most of Juan Cabrillo’s renovations will have been completed by October.
The elementary school’s renovations focused on replacing building materials through a program called “Windows, Paint, Floors and Doors.” Many of these materials were replaced on the campus at some point in the 1990s. The renovation plan replaces all other materials that have not already been modernized.
These building materials became a cause for concern after testing revealed a high amount of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The school district has committed to conducting air and wipe sample testing in each renovated room to confirm all PCBs have been removed before moving teachers and students back into each space.
The school’s renovations are more than a PCB remediation.
Juan Cabrillo’s “Seaside” preschool will receive a “Reggio-inspired” facelift over the fall.
“[Reggio-inspired] makes it so students have [an] education process [that’s a] much more tactile experience of their world and plays into their senses,” Upton said.
The preschool playground will have synthetic turf, a tricycle track and a “water feature” that they’ll be able to play with in addition to the sand pit that’s currently available.
Upton said that Malibu’s schools should have some sort of renovations going on for the next few years, although the bulk of them will be happening sooner rather than later.
“Summer of 2017 is like ‘Don’t anybody plan a vacation, we got a lot of work to do,’” Upton said.
