Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District begins classes the August 22 and through out the summer the district has been working on multiple renovations to improve various facilities.
This summer the district did major construction at eight school sites, all funded by Measure BB and ES. Overall the Maintenance Department completed over $600,000 in maintenance projects.
“SMMUSD had a very aggressive modernization and upgrade schedule to improve our facilities over the summer and we are on target or close to target with the results the week before school starts,” said SMMUSD Public Relations Officer, Gail Pinsker. “Our facilities team has worked hard to present students and staff with school environments that are more conducive to learning and play.”
Olympic High School
The district conducted a modernization project, which is a multi-phase project including seismic upgrades, new flooring, doors, paint, fire alarm and other school amenities. The district completed phases one and two in the past six months and are now working on phase three. The completion of modernization is expected to be January 2018. There is also a window, paint and floor project in planning now to complete the remainder of the campus in the near future.
Grant Elementary
The district retrofitted about 300 windows as the second phase of the window, paint and floor project. This completed the retrofit of all of the windows at Grant. The project is complete and the site is ready for school to begin.
Will Rogers Learning Community
The district constructed the second phase of the window, paint, and floor project, which included over 900 storefront windows, doors, fire alarm upgrades and accessibility improvements including walkways and restrooms.
“This was a big and complicated project,” said SMMUSD Chief Operations Officer, Carey Upton. “The site will be ready for classes to resume, but we will have a few projects to complete in the next few months, including the new alarm and some accessibility issues.”
Roosevelt Elementary
The school received a full window, paint, and floor project which included about 300 retrofitted windows, doors, flooring which included tile and carpet, interior paint and exterior trim, accessibility improvements and fire alarm upgrades. The district is currently finishing up the last details and the site will be ready for students.
Webster Elementary
The school received full window, paint and floor treatment that included over 680 storefront windows, many doors, flooring, interior pain and exterior trim along with accessibility improvements.
“The project will extend into the fall,” said Upton. “It was a bigger project than we could complete in the ten weeks of the summer. We also ran into some extensive termite damage. There is a swing space at Webster which will allow us to complete the project this fall.”
Malibu High School
The music, art and special education buildings received window, paint, and floor treatment. Accessibility upgrades were required in the restrooms of the two-story building. The district upgrades the entire special education suite. The district also began the new parking lot that will be completed by January 2018 and they created a swing space in the bungalows for administration. Construction also consisted of renovating the track with new surface.
“We demolished the middle school building to prepare it for replacement and also demolished most of the library and the administration buildings,” said Upton. “We are gearing up to starting to two new buildings, Admin and Library and Middle School in the winter of 2018.”
Santa Monica High School
Two projects were taking place this summer at Samohi. The primary project for the district was to reconfigure Sealy Field to include a softball field and the basketball courts. We will also be adding field lights to the field. This project is still in the process and will be completed in the fall. Upton explains the district will also be upgrading the football field lights to LEDs, which should improve direction control and reduce glare. The other project was upgrading the Science Quad with synthetic turf and decomposed granite hardscape.
Some project were scheduled to be summer projects, while others were scheduled to take longer than the summer.
“While we tackled quite a lot of work this summer to move students into better learning facilities, we are on schedule for most of the projects,” said Upton.
