For the first time in several years, it felt like things were getting into a routine when it came to school, Berkeley parent Rebecca Sherer said.
For her rising seventh-grader who attends Longfellow Middle School and her older daughter, things were starting to feel more regular than they had in years.
“We had just got back from COVID, it was the principal’s second year, we did the redistricting — it felt like Longfellow was getting into a rhythm,” Sherer said.
So when she opened her email on June 14 and found a letter from the school announcing the campus was red-tagged and will likely be closed for at least the next two school years because of dry rot damage so severe that it threatens structural integrity of the main building, she was taken aback.
“It felt a little like the rug getting pulled out from under you,” Sherer said.
Her family isn’t alone. Parents are filled with questions about how the upcoming school year will look and concerns about how a building as fragile as Longfellow’s could not have been fixed sooner. It’s also raised alarm about the potential state of school infrastructure more broadly.
According to school district leaders, workers found the dry rot on June 7 upon removing stucco from the southern facade of the campus’ main academic building, which they were doing as part of a project to replace windows.
The supports of the building are crumbling, district leaders said in a memo posted to the district website, and “although damage has only been verified on the southern face at this time, the structural integrity of this building has been compromised to the point that the structural engineers have red-tagged the building.”
Because of that, no one is allowed onto the campus until the safety issues have been mitigated, and the district estimates that the construction to fix the campus will take at least two years.
For at least that period, Longfellow students, teachers and administrators will move to the Berkeley Adult School, approximately a mile and a half away.
The news of Longfellow’s closure was “disappointing and disturbing,” said parent George Torgun.
“There are so many questions we don’t have answers to,” said Torgun, whose children include a rising seventh grader at Longfellow and a younger student in elementary school. “Our school district has an obligation to operate school sites that are safe.”
District officials insist there was no way to determine earlier that the building was in such danger.
While the district has a building maintenance program that includes inspections throughout the year, spokesperson Trish McDermott said earlier this month that no inspections caught the deeper damage.
“There was no way to discover the level of damage behind the stucco, which could not be discovered until the stucco was removed,” notes the district’s “Frequently Asked Questions” page posted to its website.
The state agency responsible for the safe construction of public school buildings, the Division of State Architect, said it does not regularly inspect existing schools.
The agency is charged with reviewing and overseeing three phases of school construction projects: approving plans for construction or renovation, overseeing the construction of the project, and certifying a project as structurally safe and meeting requirements for accessibility and things like fire safety.
But while the State Architect will oversee the renovation of Longfellow and the construction repairs needed to fix the current problem, it does not provide that oversight for school buildings on a long-term basis.
Following the certification of a project, “the Division of the State Architect has no authority to examine/inspect school buildings for any purpose,” wrote a spokesperson for that division, Fallon Okwuosa, who serves as Assistant Deputy Director for Public Affairs at the department that houses the office.
Okwuosa noted that a school district is responsible for maintenance and review of their building conditions and that schools are not required to conduct or submit any regular inspections to the division over the lifetime of their buildings.
The city of Berkeley’s Building and Safety Division does not have jurisdictional authority over public schools, according to a city public information officer, Maitée Rossoukhi. She also noted the city does not have policies in place to inspect state buildings for unsafe conditions and it does not issue building permits for the renovations of such buildings.
The California Department of Education also told Berkeleyside that it had no jurisdiction over school buildings.
Longfellow, which has been reconstructed several times in its history since it was first built in 1905 as a small wood frame school building, is among thousands of U.S. schools in grave need of repair, government reports show.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office found in a 2020 report that more than half — approximately 54% — of public school districts need to update or replace multiple building systems or features in their schools, including important upgrades to “structural integrity” and features like roofing and ventilation systems.
A 2021 report from the National Council of School Facilities found that the U.S. had spent $85 billion less than what it needed to keep public school buildings properly maintained.
It’s not the first time in recent years a Berkeley school has faced a disruption.
In 2020, Oxford Elementary School was moved from North Berkeley to University Avenue after it was found to be at risk of endangering students if a major earthquake were to occur.
Now, Longfellow leaders and staff will take on the urgent task of shifting operations to Berkeley Adult School’s campus within the next few weeks.
“I’m glad they found the problem before it was a disaster,” said Chris Rauen, a parent of a soon-to-be sixth grader at Longfellow and a member of the Berkeley Schools Excellence Program Planning and Oversight Committee. But he worries that it might be difficult for staff to get technology, books, furniture and more out of a red-tagged building in time for the August start of the school year.
And despite confidence in the teachers, he wonders if all the activities that supplement a school’s academic program will be accessible on the new campus.
“Is there going to be a comparable experience,” Rauen wondered. “The outdoor sports, garden program, facilities for music program and science classrooms — those are important.”
Berkeley district leaders, posting on a designated “FAQ” page for Longfellow, say they are updating answers to questions as they find them.
“We believe the new facility will allow us to maintain our current programs and classes,” they noted. “The facility has a gym, and we are evaluating location options for after school outdoor sports and will provide additional information when it is available.”
They’ve also noted that professional movers will move the contents of the school to the new facility and that Berkeley Adult School’s programming will move to multiple locations, including the King Child Development Center (1939 Ward St.), the district office on Bonar Street and the “dining commons” across the street from the main Longfellow campus (which is not red-tagged as the rest of the campus is).
But, they warned, “In this emergency situation, there are no ideal solutions.”