The Highlander Road Elementary School campus in West Hills has been closed since 1982. Demolition is slated to start next month and at Oso Avenue next week.

*UPDATED

LA Unified will begin demolition Monday at the first of two schools to be razed in the West San Fernando Valley. But no new construction is planned, leaving empty lots in residential neighborhoods.

The Oso Avenue and Highlander Road elementary schools have sat mostly empty for more than 30 years, becoming eyesores and a source of conflict between their neighbors and the district.

The district is exploring the option of building new schools on the sites, but no solid plans are in place and the school board has yet to approve any new construction, said LA Unified Chief Facilities Executive Mark Hovatter. The current plan is to raze the schools but leave the concrete slab foundations which could be used as part of any new construction, he said.

“(Neighbors) have had to live with staring at old dilapidated buildings long enough,” Hovatter said. “I want to make it as amenable as possible to the local neighborhoods and I’m working with the local councils to make sure that what I’m doing is reflective of what they want us to do.”

Demolition at Oso is scheduled to begin Monday and at Highlander on Aug. 20, Hovatter said, at a total cost of $2,337,303.

The schools were closed in the early 1980s as West Valley enrollment declined. In total, 18 schools in the West Valley closed in the late 1970s and early ’80s and six schools have re-opened, according to LA Unified, and others are still in use for other purposes. One is in use as administrative buildings, one was swapped with nearby California State University, Northridge and other was sold. In total, five school buildings remain vacant. Highlander had been rented by a private school for several years in the 1990s and occasionally used for filming.

Hovatter said the district began informing neighbors around Oso about the demolition on Saturday by handing out flyers door to door but has not yet started outreach around Highlander.

Several neighbors of Highlander contacted by LA School Report were unaware the district had plans to tear down the school, which the board approved in May, and were not happy about it.

“This is the first I’ve heard of them tearing it down. I had no idea and I’ve lived across the street from it for 30 years,” said Bonnie Johnson. “It’s kind of hard to say if I like the idea of an empty lot. Right now it is really derelict. It is a fire hazard. It looks like homeless people sleep there. Every now and then someone vandalizes it. It has been a real eyesore. I don’t know how people will feel about an open vacant lot.”

Highlander neighbor Faye Berta, who also was unaware of the coming demolition, said the consensus in the neighborhood has been for tearing down the school only when there are immediate plans to build a new one.

“I am quite taken by surprise. I don’t know which is better, a big empty school surrounded by weeds or a big, empty, ugly lot. We have all kinds of problems with the school,” Berta said. “So they’re going to leave slabs so skateboards can go on it, that’s the plan? They are just really into destroying the neighborhood, aren’t they? I’m not happy either way. I’m not happy looking at it the way it is, and I’m not happy thinking there could be a skateboard park there. Just think of the nighttime thrill that all the drug dealers are going to have, which would then attract vagrants.”

Neighbor Mark Berens said he has been emailing and calling the district for some time to get information on its plans for the school but had never heard back.

“I am surprised, not necessarily that it is happening but that it is happening now. I have asked for a plan and for an outline, and I haven’t gotten a response yet,” he said. “It’s a little disappointing that we don’t have any current communication regarding the project.”

Hopes were raised for new schools on the sites in the last two years as nearby El Camino Real Charter High School, an independent charter school, came forward with a plan to develop the sites and a third closed campus, Platt Ranch, into middle schools and a science center associated with El Camino. Platt Ranch was to be a science center as part of the plan, but it was contingent upon approval of the other two sites. The district has not announced any plans for Platt Ranch, and El Camino’s director of marketing, Melanie Horton, has said they are retooling their plans for Platt Ranch and may come forward still with a new proposal.

The district had long said it had no money or need for new schools in the area, and El Camino officials since 2014 and until recently were working on plans for new schools and conducting community outreach after having been named the preferred developer of the sites by the LA Unified school board.

But the plans came to a sudden halt in late 2015 and early this year, when over a series of meetings the school board denied El Camino’s charter applications for the sites as the district announced previously unknown plans to develop the campuses into two traditional schools directly controlled by the district.

The sudden change angered many Highlander neighbors, who had thrown their support behind El Camino. A group of them confronted LA Unified Local District Northwest Superintendent Vivian Ekchian about the sudden change in March at a West Hills Neighborhood Council meeting.

One of their concerns for the site was the district’s plan for a high school associated with Hale Charter Academy, a nearby affiliated charter school. The school is located in a residential neighborhood and residents preferred an elementary school, as a high school would increase in traffic.

At the West Hills Neighborhood Council meeting, Ekchian made a promise to the neighbors that is was at least a priority for her to have the school torn down. The demolition is a significant budget commitment for the district because the money has to come out of general funds, not bond funds earmarked for construction, because in order to use bond funds the demolition must be part of a new construction project. This was one reason the district had not previously torn down the schools, but Ekchian, who moved to her role in 2015, said it was a priority for her.

“Many community members have contacted me and said this school has been sitting there, it has been an eyesore and a problem for the community for 30 years. And we have met over time with officials from the school district, and there has always been an attempt at demolition it but never has materialized,” Ekchian said this week. “It was important for as a local district to make a commitment by which we stand and to show them that we follow through on our commitments. That’s why this demolition is significant, because it has been over three decades of frustration that is being addressed by us.”

Hovatter said he was not yet sure if he will construct fences around the empty lots, but for the moment he does not want to.

“I believe that it’s been an eyesore long enough. If we go and put a chain-link fence around it, it’s still going to be an eyesore,” he said. “We have included within our budget money to install a fence, but initially I want to see if that is acceptable to the surrounding neighborhood. Ultimately I’m going to end up doing what the neighbors want us to do. But a fence doesn’t really stop anyone from entering the campus.”

*UPDATED to show that five schools remain closed, while others are open or being used for other purposes.

So what about LA?

“Yes, our water is safe, not only LA Unified, but LA has some of the safest water in the nation,” said Robert Laughton, director of the Office of Environmental Health and Safety for the district.

“I have never seen an agency that goes as far as we do to ensure safe drinking water,” said Laughton, who was expecting phone calls about LA Unified’s water after the Flint and Newark news reports but has yet to receive any. “I haven’t even heard of any agency that does all the things we do.”

Laughton detailed for LA School Report what’s different in LA, how LA Unified tests its water and a new program the district is rolling out for drinking water in the schools.

NO LEAD PIPES

The problems on the East Coast stem from lead pipes. “No one I know, no plumber has ever seen a lead pipe,” Laughton said.

Pipes in California are made from cast iron, but what holds those pipes together does contain small amounts of lead.

Until 1998, solder materials were 50 percent lead and 50 percent tin, so if water stagnates in a pipe, lead could leach out into the water. “We all have that problem,” Laughton said, not just schools, adding that the city of Los Angeles is continuously testing its water supply and “I meet with DWP regularly.”

“The other issue is brass,” Laughton said, a metal alloy used in faucets that until Jan. 1, 2014, could be made up of at least 8 percent lead but now can be no more than a quarter of a percent, so “we are basically lead free at this point,” Laughton said.

FLUSHING

But to make sure no one is drinking water with lead, fountains and other taps where the water is used for drinking or in food preparation are flushed — by running water through them — for a minimum of 30 seconds each day throughout the district.

There are about 48,000 drinking fountains in the district, and LA Unified tested all of them in 2008 to determine which ones had elevated levels of lead. Those offenders, which constituted about 2 percent of all fountains, were removed.

But to be safe, all fountains have continued to be flushed and will be until the district completes a lead-mitigation program approved by the school board in September and begun about three months ago.

Only about 40 schools no longer need to flush their fountains because they have been cleared by that program, part of a $20 million bond-funded drinking water program in which every school in the district will be surveyed. If any fountains require flushing because of their lead levels, the fountain is either removed if the school can live without it, or the plumbing is changed out or a filtration device is added. Within the next 18 to 24 months all schools will have been cleared and then flushing will not be necessary.

About 500 LA Unified schools currently have no more than one drinking fountain that requires flushing. All fountains in early education centers already have been switched to filtered water “as a precaution,” Laughton said.

The flushing is conducted by different people depending on the campus — the plant manager, teachers, classroom volunteers or even students designated by the teacher — but each school’s principal must verify at the end of each month that the flushing was completed. Then the local district superintendent verifies the principal’s logs. And Laughton’s office performs safety inspections at each school every year to evaluate the flushing logs.

Chief facilities director Mark Hovatter said in a report in January that eliminating flushing would save 9,500 gallons of water a day or 2.5 million gallons a year. It would also save 500 hours of custodial time a day or 130,000 hours a year.

HYDRATION SYSTEMS

The district’s next frontier in drinking water is the installation of hydration stations. The vertical appliance is built into a pole and dispenses water, like on a refrigerator door, and will allow students to fill their own water bottles and encourage them to drink more water.

The first two have been installed at Jefferson High School and at district headquarters downtown, but schools throughout LA Unified will be getting the hydration stations in the next few months, with 800 schools slated to have them within two years.

“It was good timing,” Laughton said of the district’s efforts this year to ensure lead-free drinking water. But he noted about the current news stories on lead in drinking water, “What is lost is this is not a schools issues, this is a societal issue. It’s the same plumbing system everywhere. Courts, hospitals” — and homes.

The LA Unified school board will consider major upgrades at school sites throughout the district at their regular meeting Tuesday.

The Facilities Services Division is asking the board to approve district bonds for projects including replacing a half-century-old canopy over a stairwell, replacing 60-year-old bleachers, upgrading walk-in freezers at 305 schools and replacing ovens, ice machines and refrigerators at 218 schools.

The Facilities Services Division is asking to approve $20.5 million to modernize walk-in freezers throughout the district. The plan would start the second quarter of this year and be completed by the fourth quarter of 2019, according to Facilities Chief Mark Hovatter.

The repairs will “focus on providing new panels, ceilings, floors, doors and new energy-efficient refrigeration and lighting systems” and will “improve student health, safety and educational quality,” Hovatter said. (See which schools are listed to get the walk-in freezer upgrades and their timeline in the Board Materials, search for “Tab 10.“)

The division is also asking for $1.85 million for a modernization program for kitchen equipment at schools districtwide. Those 218 schools will have the improvements made by the fourth quarter of 2016, if approved. (See the list of schools, what will be fixed and the timeline under Board Materials in Tab 11.)

Critical school repairs have to be done at 15 schools, so the division is asking for $18.6 million to schedule those. The money is available through the district’s bond program, which has $7.8 billion available.

The critical repairs include replacing roofs in four buildings that are more than 25 years old at Aragon Avenue Elementary School and a lunch shelter, and upgrades on 13 roofs more than 20 years old at Belvedere Middle School. Roofing repairs are also needed at Bethune Middle School, 10th Street Elementary, Chandler Learning Academy, Cohasset Street Elementary, Frost Middle, Hawaiian Avenue Elementary, Van Nuys Middle and Farmdale Elementary schools.

At Gulf Avenue Elementary School, a 50-year-old concrete canopy over a stairwell needs to be replaced, as well as deteriorated grandstand bleachers on the Hamilton High football field that are more than 60 years old.

Also on the list: fixing fire damage at Los Angeles Academy Middle School and air conditioning, heating and ventilation systems at Rogers Continuation High School and Stoney Point Continuation High School.

Four of the critical projects are in Richard Vladovic‘s and Scott Schmerelson’s districts (representing the furthest north and the furthest south in the nation’s second largest district). Three are in Monica Garcia’s district, two are in Monica Ratliff’s and one in George McKenna’s. None are in board president Steve Zimmer’s district. The cost and time schedule for each project is in the Board Materials (search Tab 9).

“We don’t really look at which districts, but more about where the greatest critical need is,” Hovatter said.

In other board actions scheduled for Tuesday at 1 p.m., the board will consider the Second Interim Financial Report which will outline current projections that the district may not be able to meet its financial obligations for the current fiscal year and for the two subsequent years. That report is to be given by Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly.

The board will also hear staff recommendations for the denial of the charter petition for WISH Academy High School and the renewal of the charter for the Gifted Academy of Mathematics and Entrepreneurial Studies, which were delayed from the last meeting, as well as approval for material revision of KIPP Comienza Community Preparatory to expand to middle school and renewal of the CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger Community School.

The district will discuss restoring two stand-alone schools, Fourth Street School and Fourth Street Primary Center, and hold public hearings for new charter school petitions: KIPP Fuerza Academy, USC College Prep Blue Campus and USC College Prep Orange Campus.

School board meetings are open to the public. The earlier closed session starts at 10 a.m. and allows public hearing discussion beforehand, and the regular session begins at 1 p.m. at the school headquarters at 333 S. Beaudry Ave.