New school overcomes a mountain of obstacles

BILL SPARKES/Acorn Newspapers NEW SCHOOL TOUR-Late afternoon sunlight filters through the framing of the new Yerba Buena School as a group of residents tours the construction site. The new campus should be completed by January or February of next year, depending on how the rainy season affects ongoing construction. Yellow caution tape, exposed pipes, bare concrete floors and wood framing greeted visitors to a "hard hat" tour June 3 at the new Yerba Buena Elementary School site between Agoura Hills and Westlake Village.

Yerba Buena's Parent Faculty Club hosted the tour to inform the community that the long-awaited school is on schedule to open next year.

Although approved by voters six years ago, skyrocketing land prices put the project on hold. When the Las Virgenes Unified School District settled on "Lot 89," a 30-acre parcel between Reyes Adobe and Lindero Canyon roads, other problems arose.

The district was required to place high power voltage lines underground, and progress was further delayed when a small portion of the site was found to have soil contamination due to pesticides that had been used on a turn-ofthe-century farmhouse located on the land.

But once work got underway, the $36-million project proceeded on schedule and on budget, construction manager Don Blake said. He credited the general contractor, S.C. Anderson Inc., for handling the many challenges that the school site presented. Tours of the site, conducted by Las Virgenes Deputy Superintendent Donald Zimring, were followed by dinner and dancing in the school's unfinished multipurpose room.

In keeping with the hard hat theme, dinner tables were decorated with flowers and yellow construction hats.

"It's probably the only school in the world that is in two cities," Zimring said.

The school straddles the boundary between Agoura Hills and Westlake Village.

"Not only is this so exciting for Yerba Buena, it's exciting for Lindero Canyon Middle School," Zimring said. "The end of construction here will be the beginning of construction at Lindero."

When students move from the "old" to the "new" Yerba Buena, the school's original site will be used for the expansion of Lindero Canyon Middle School next door.

The construction site, which is nestled against the mountains off Lindero Canyon Road, is home to a variety of sensitive plant and animal species, including the southwestern pond turtle. Oak trees-480 in all-had to be protected, and Medea Creek, which runs behind the property, is a "blue-line" creek--it runs all the way to the ocean.

S.C. Anderson had to ensure that the creek could be protected from harm since its effects on the environment are so broad.

Zimring said that building a new school would ordinarily involve two governmental agencies, but the Yerba Buena site proved far more challenging and required the oversight of 27 agencies, including the Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over waterways.

The tour gave parents, teachers and students the opportunity to witness progress on the construction. The administration building is situated at the back of the property and several classrooms are clustered around a courtyard.

When completed, the school will accommodate 500 students from kindergarten through fifth grade. Zimring said each pair of classrooms will share a workroom.

The library/media center will feature a vaulted ceiling with skylights, and a bank of windows that frame mountain views. Zimring called the center the school's "signature piece." The center will be large enough to accommodate three classes at once, he said.

Chris Faherty, a parent of a third grader at the school, agreed that the library is spectacular.

"We are thrilled," Faherty said. She believes the planned outdoor nature center might rank as high as the library as the school's best feature. The school will provide a computer lab with 36 computers.

"It's terrific," said Yerba Buena computer teacher Allison Weisman. "Not only is it a beautiful campus, but I'm thrilled the computer lab is so spacious." She said the school presently has 20 computers.

Construction of a preschool on the premises also has begun, Zimring said. He called a retaining wall that was constructed on Lindero Canyon Road the "great wall of Yerba Buena."

While the wall was an engineering challenge for the contractor, a power pole in the middle of the school also posed a construction dilemma. Rather than delay construction and wait for Southern California Edison to approve the under-grounding of power lines, the contractor built around the pole and plans to remove it before the school opens.

A regulation soccer field is included in the school's design, and the city of Westlake Village has already agreed to rent the fields for use outside school hours. The city, not the school district, will pay for the field's maintenance and irrigation costs, Zimring said.

Work on the bridge across Medea Creek has begun. Zimring said a helicopter will be used to deliver sections of the bridge to the site.

Schools are prohibited on property where floods have been recorded more than once every 50 years. The new school, Zimring said, is on a 100-year flood plain.

Yerba Buena PFA President Sharon Hobba has said fundraising programs are already

underway. School families and alumni are being encouraged to have their names engraved on bricks, planters and benches that will be permanent fixtures at the school. The money raised will be used for beautification projects.