Formerly Water-damaged Sherman Elementary in San Diego Unified is Demolished & Rebuilt as a Healthy and High Performing School
Above, May 1, 2008, the brand new school built on the grounds of the demolished Sherman Elementary, San Diego Unified School District. The new school replaces a water-damaged school that caused decades of reported illnesses.
Important: All new schools in San Diego Unified are built using healthy and high-performing guidelines (see www.chps.net), under a policy adopted by the Board of Education in 2003.
This new school, unimaginatively called "Eighth Area Elementary School" built with CHPS designs, has windows that open, with buildings that will be healthier and mold-resistant. We think San Diego Unified (SDUSD) made a great choice to demolish and rebuild a healthy school for this neighborhood. However, this school district and school board will not admit that Sherman's demolition was due to its many complaints, poor design, and maintenance neglect, despite a thoroughly negative San Diego Health Dept. report in 2004, documenting extensive water-damage and filth. We hope SDUSD does not neglect and ruin this beautiful new building. In a time of extreme budget cuts, they still need to maintain it properly, showing responsibility in their use of taxpayer funds. The public and school board will have to monitor this district, as there is no track record for good maintenance - as a recent audit revealed.
To listen to the story of what happened to a teacher at this school, click here .
To read about what happened, click here .
Click below for more Sherman photos of water-damage, moisture, broken condensate lines, pooling water on roof by air intake, filthy old filters, mold-like substance inside HVAC, etc. taken on roof and inside building, just prior to SDSUD board's demolition decision.
Sherman 2004 photos part 1
To find out how to adopt the healthy CHPS designs for your school district, click here.
To learn more, click Read more....
The photo below shows (Jan. 2007) the property where Sherman Elementary, a dangerous, leaky, damp, toxic 30-year-old school, once stood. Demolished, finally, by San Diego Unified School District, in January, 2007, after 16 years of staff complaints. Sherman, built in the 1970's, had a flawed design and very poor maintenance. The air was full of excess carbon dioxide, the building full of moisture, the HVAC system absolutely filthy, visible debris floating in the indoor air, full of garbage in the lobby, etc.
This school harmed untold thousands, including many adults working on this site. It can no longer harm people. This decision, to demolish, was a good one - despite the secrecy about why, despite the obvious lies that were told about the health of the building, and despite waiting 17 years to address the problems.
Minutes after I took these photos, a neighborhood parent told me that her children had been made ill by this building when it was less than 10 years old. That struck me as particularly sad. This school was making people sick from its earliest days, and that problem was not solved for more than two decades. How many have had their lives and futures impacted and destroyed by this sick, toxic building? How many have become chronically ill, like me? Just this one poorly designed and built school building had the capacity to impact many tens of thousands. Up to 1300 occupied this building each year.
Sherman Elementary, in May, 2006, photographed 6 months before its demolition
The thirty year old school, built in the 70's, resembled a prison from the exterior. Surrounded by 8 foot high chain link fence, installed by a former principal, preventing the neighborhood from using the adjacent park, and sickening many of the neighborhood children, workers, and teaching staff, this toxic school could not be torn down fast enough to save health and lives.
Sherman problems included an old, broken, dirty exterior and interior ductwork, air intakes, and filters; standing water by air intake, water stained interior brick walls (for decades, like this, see below).
San Diego Unified School District is, reprehensibly, still hiding the facts on Sherman and other schools like it. They are not taking responsibility for the damage to all the people they have harmed. But this building can no longer harm anyone. That is, in itself, a victory.
Susan Brinchman
for more about Sherman, see below...
Artist, pictured in front of a mural inside Sherman's water-stained lobby. The mural was to have celebrated the education Sherman students were to receive.
Let us hope that the new school design will be a mold-resistent, healthy school (see www.chps.org).
No more schools like this, below!
Dampness that leached up into the walls, from the moist foundation below. Interior lobby photo of Sherman Elementary, Winter, 2004.
Click below for more Sherman photos of water-damage, moisture, broken condensate lines, pooling water on roof by air intake, filthy old filters, mold-like substance inside HVAC, etc. taken on roof and inside building, just prior to SDSUD board's demolition decision.
Sherman 2004 photos part 1
Sherman 2004 photos part 2
San Diego Unified School District Maintenance Embarrassing in Audit
San Diego Unified's maintenance practices are embarrassing, according to a new, external audit, presented March, 2007, to the Board of Ed, who ordered it.
This is the result of a new San Diego School Board that cares more about student health and ordered an audit of maintenance practices in San Diego Unified. Three of the board members are former teachers who care about the students, and one is a parent activist. A lesson in electing people who care and have a background to understand the issues to the local boards.
SB
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http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070315/news_lz7e15lets.html
Published in Letters to the Editor, San Diego Union Tribune
March 15, 2007
City school district's maintenance problems
Regarding “Embarrassing/Schools' maintenance unit excels in disorder” (Editorial, March 9, see below):
Maintenance at San Diego Unified School District is more than embarrassing, it is dangerously neglectful. As a teacher for 25 years in the district, I can tell you about disorderly, poorly maintained facilities. I can tell you about both wealthy and poor neighborhoods, where it rained inside when it rained outside. I can tell you about most custodians who did their level best to do the work of five people, and barely had time to empty trash cans every other day.
The system was dysfunctional, and not at the lower end, but at the upper. No emphasis at the top level, especially by superintendents and managers, was put on the safety of the students or staff when it came to filth and debris in heating and ventilating systems.
I commend the school board for pursuing some of the reasons for the dangerous conditions of its unkempt schools. This is not the fault of the rank and file, but of policies that still do not reflect a respect for health. The Center for School Mold Help, a nonprofit I created to inform the public about mold in schools, chronicles these problems and more at www.schoolmoldhelp.org.
SUSAN BRINCHMAN
San Diego
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original article referenced:
San Diego Union Tribune, San Diego, CA
UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Embarrassing:
Schools' maintenance unit excels in disorder
March 9, 2007
The union representing management employees of the San Diego Unified School District is livid that managers with decades of experience had no
role in a consultant's blistering evaluation of the district's maintenance
and operations division. What the union should be is embarrassed.
According to the consultant, The Portolan Group, those decades of
experience and $131 million a year in taxpayers' money have produced:
A maintenance division that does not know what hours its employees work or
what they did for however many hours they did it. This lunacy alone should
persuade most San Diegans of the need for drastic change. But there's
plenty more.
The number of custodians in the district at any given time is anybody's
guess.
Because custodians are managed by individual schools or the district's
central office, the amount spent on custodial services varies from school
to school and the quality from clean to filthy.
Money for maintenance is spread across too many district budgets to
effectively track expenditures.
The division charges its school customers an overhead charge of 93
percent, billing $1,930 for a job that costs $1,000 in labor and
materials.
Despite practically doubling its charges, the maintenance and operations
division for years has run out of money – by $15 million to $18 million
annually.
No MBA required to marvel at this disorder, and at maintenance and
operations director Bill Dos Santos' excuses. The dollar figures are
wrong, says the director of the division, which has overrun its annual
budget for years. His staff, he says, has been planning for some time to
buy a decent computerized financial system. With what money?
Fortunately, a school board majority has not only accepted the report from
The Portolan Group, it is enlisting Portolan to help with the actual
reorganization.
Several years ago when the budget-strapped district pared maintenance
crews, parents watched as some San Diego schools became blighted by weeds
and dead grass. They chafed at union rules that prevented parents from
regularly pulling the weeds and mowing the grass. Based on genuine
oversight of finances and performance, the reorganization plan promises
more custodial and landscaping services, performed to a systemwide
standard at specified times and places, and at the same cost to taxpayers.
Nonetheless, two members of the school board voted against pursuing a new
management structure for this ill-run division. They might note that
officials of the union representing rank-and-file school employees support
the changes. They might note, too, that the school district exists to
serve children in well-ordered, well-maintained facilities, not to provide
lifetime jobs – not in maintenance and operations, not in school
administration, not in classrooms.
Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070309/news_lz1ed9bottom.html
Sherman Elementary Health Dept Report
Click to view Sherman Elementary Health Dept Report Info and Download
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