GILROY
– The sight of a still-empty Eliot Elementary School is
prompting some to question whether the project to demolish the
buildings and construct a new school will be finished by August
2005.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – The sight of a still-empty Eliot Elementary School is prompting some to question whether the project to demolish the buildings and construct a new school will be finished by August 2005.
The demolition and rebuilding of Eliot is on schedule, even if the 470 Seventh St. school still stands, empty, said Charlie Van Meter, director of facilities and maintenance.
“Be patient, it’ll all be done soon,” he said. “We knew that we wouldn’t be awarding a (construction) contract until spring.”
Eliot Principal Diane Elia can’t help but wonder what will happen should construction fall behind schedule.
“I’m hoping they’re right, because I don’t know what’s going to happen if they’re wrong,” Elia said.
Elia said some teachers at Ascencion Solorsano Middle School, where Eliot is currently housed, asked her Friday about the status of the new construction. Both schools are nervous, Elia said, because the campus will be at capacity next year, when Eliot’s more than 400 students and Solorsano’s class of 226 sixth-graders are joined by a new, slightly larger incoming class of sixth-graders.
“So if things don’t happen like they’re supposed to, they’re worried about what’s going to happen the following year (2005),” Elia said.
Eliot students joined the first sixth-grade class of the new Solorsano last fall and are scheduled to stay there while their own school in east Gilroy is torn down and rebuilt as Gilroy Unified School District’s only two-story building.
Some parents are also concerned about the apparent lack of progress on the project.
“It seems like they should have gotten started already,” said Senta Colombo, who has two daughters attending Eliot, one in second grade and another in fourth.
Colombo actually lives closer to Solorsano than Eliot, but she said the neighborhood families will certainly appreciate the new school closer to home. Eliot students are bussed from their school to Solorsano each morning and bussed back to Eliot in the afternoon.
Colombo has seen building plans for the $14 million, 22-room school and looks forward to sending her daughter there.
“It seems really nice, it’s kind of exciting,” Colombo said.
In GUSD’s Facilities Master Plan, the timeline for Eliot shows construction beginning between April and July of this year. Plans for the building are in the process of being approved by the state, usually a three-month process. Once the plans are approved, which Van Meter expects will occur in March, the approximately $10 million construction project will be advertised for at least two weeks.
The total bidding process will likely take two months between advertising and accepting a bid, Van Meter said.
“They can go to work right away” on the 13-month construction, he said. While most new projects take 16 to 18 months, building a two-story school takes less time.
“When you’re building a two-story classroom building, you only have one foundation to build, one pad, one roof,” Van Meter said. “You’re building two stories high, but the framing goes really fast.”
Superintendent Edwin Diaz said Eliot’s construction timeline includes two to three months of flexibility to accommodate delays, so the plan now is to work as quickly as possible on the project to take advantage of the extra time.
“That became a point of discussion with the board, so the outcome of that discussion was to move forward as quickly as possible, even though we have enough time built into the schedule,” Diaz said.
In past school board meetings, trustees asked why the school has yet to be demolished, even though it was emptied this summer.
The demolition will be included in the construction contract and will take place immediately before work on the new building begins, Van Meter said.
At Thursday night’s school board meeting, Trustee Bob Kraemer inquired whether there would be more leeway in construction time if the building were demolished sooner.
Performing the demolition as a separate project takes twice as much work and will not save money or time, Van Meter said.
“The demolition takes nothing, they just come in and eat those buildings,” Van Meter said.
The district is performing only minimal maintenance at Eliot, he said. Some windows, broken by vandals, needed patching, and the grass is still mowed.
At a facilities study session last month, Trustee Jim Rogers expressed concern that residents living near Eliot would be bothered by the noise of construction. The noise of buses might also be bothersome because they will access the school in a different location, he said.
Construction Manager Gary Corlett told Trustees he will meet with neighborhood residents to update them on the days and times of construction and the new bus route. He also noted that, since GUSD students now attend schools in their neighborhoods, fewer buses will be traveling to and from the school.
Meanwhile, Colombo said she doesn’t worry about her daughters sharing a campus with middle-school students.
“Just from what I’ve seen, the sixth-graders there now, they seem to be good kids,” Colombo said. “They don’t interact much now; they have separate recesses, so I’m fine with that.”
Elia and Solorsano Principal Sal Tomasello have said the schools will likely stagger the start and end of their school days to better manage the students and traffic at the 7121 Grenache Way school.
