Victoria builds for the future

COSTA MESA ? Over the next few years, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District will undergo its largest makeover in history. Under the Measure F school bond, construction crews plan to erect towering buildings, spacious theaters, athletic fields and gymnasiums. When district leaders proposed the $282-million bond last year, they gave it a simple slogan: Bringing Newport-Mesa into the 21st century.

Meanwhile, over on the Westside, Victoria Elementary School waits quietly to finish the 20th century.

Six years ago, voters passed Measure A, a $110-million bond to clean and repair nearly all of the campuses in Newport-Mesa. Since the construction work began in 2003, crews have repainted the schools, given them new doors and windows, upgraded telephones and electrical wiring. Now, with Measure F looming on the horizon, the district has one last campus left to renovate: Victoria, which will cap off a sterling academic year by getting a long-awaited face-lift.

“Everybody will be packed up,” Principal Judy Laakso said. “The office staff has one more week [after classes end], but all the teachers will be packed up the last day of school with the kids. They’re boxing everything now.”

Victoria, which opened in 1963, is the last campus on the Measure A to-do list. The district attended to its other campuses first because Victoria already got an extensive renovation 13 years ago, when it reopened after being closed for a number of years.

Now, the district is on the verge of completing its first-ever school bond. For a few fierce weeks over the summer, contractors plan to install new carpets and ceiling tiles at Victoria, replace portable classrooms, and even expand the school’s parking lot ? which, currently, is so small that visitors often walk to the campus from nearby neighborhoods.

“The teachers don’t even all have a parking space,” said PTA president Krista Murphy. “We feel bad for them.”

According to Deputy Supt. Paul Reed, who oversees the Measure A projects, Victoria will finish construction more quickly than any other site in the district. Once class ends in June, Newport-Mesa will bring in moving trucks to vacate all the rooms, with the goal of having the whole campus overhauled by the new school year.

“Everyone else, we did a section of the school at a time,” Reed said. “Here, we’re going to do everything at once.”

Cavecche Engineering, a Los Alamitos-based firm, has already won the Victoria project with a $1.4-million bid. There are other campuses left to finish under Measure A, but Victoria is the last to begin work.

The signs of departure are already visible on the playground and in the corners of classrooms. Teachers at Victoria have broken out cardboard boxes and begun to fill them with materials that the students are no longer using, while a pair of empty structures outside ? a storage bin and a dumpster ? wait for next month’s move.

The summer construction comes at the end of a remarkable year at Victoria. In the last few months, the campus won its second California Distinguished School recognition, as well as the Title I Academic Achievement Award, which honors low-income schools that post high test scores. In 2004-05, Victoria gained 45 points from the year before on the Academic Performance Index, a state system of tracking schools’ progress.

“I would say it’s one of those years, but it’s such a fantastic school, I’d say every year has been a great year,” Murphy said. “We’re fortunate to have a great principal and a great community here.”dpt.25-victoria-1-CPhotoInfoJJ1RAANP20060525izsk3lncCHRISTOPHER WAGNER / DAILY PILOT(LA)Gina Decker, a teacher’s aide, prepares to pack school supplies into boxes at Victoria Elementary School in Costa Mesa.