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Bonds
for a lifetime
by John Tawa
Take a drive by Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach and you'll discover that the campus's perimeter is completely fenced off. Heavy machinery is everywhere and landscaping throughout the 40-acre site is dug up.
You see all the trappings of a school in transition.
In mid-June, the campus was closed for the summer for an intensive, 60-day, $4.5 million infrastructure improvement project paid for with Measure A dollars, the $47 million bond measure approved by Manhattan Beach voters in 1995. The improvements will include new water, gas and sewer mains, electrical wiring, storm drains and fire service lines with additional fire hydrants.
"(The project) will allow the facility to function at the capacity it originally was intended for and accommodate future growth," explained project architect Scott Gaudineer.
For older people who have lived in the South Bay all their lives, the ongoing work at Mira Costa must be eerily reminiscent of what occurred more than 50 years ago, when ground was first broken for the high school. When thousands gather Saturday for the 50-Years, All-Class Reunion at Waller Stadium - the only part of campus that will be open - for many it will truly feel like a step back in time, to when Mira Costa first opened its doors.
How it was
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"We were the senior class on
campus for three years. We were able to establish a lot of the traditions
- mottoes, songs, things like that." - Bill Kelly, Mira Costa Class of
1953
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In the 1940's, Redondo Union High School was THE high school for the South Bay and surrounding areas. Kids from El Segundo to San Pedro attended the massive, modern facility run by the South Bay Union High School District.
As Redondo high became overcrowded, plans were made for a new high school in the northern part of the district. On May 8, 1947, the school district acquired a 40-acre tract in Southern Manhattan Beach from the Shaw Nursery, a corporation whose Japanese-American principals had been interned during World War II. This was the only tract of its size not already slated for development.
The purchase price was $60,000, 25 percent less than the land was worth at the time.
Construction began in May 1949, paid for in part by a $1.1 million bond issue approved by voters and in part by the State Department of Finance, through a program of assistance to deserving school districts. The contract price for the buildings was $672,579.42, which did not include land, paving and grading. Total construction time was 16 months.
The area was largely undeveloped at the time. The High Spot restaurant and Milton's Cafe‚ occupied two corners of what now is the intersection of Artesia Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway, remembered Tim O'Connor, a member of Mira Costa's first graduating class.
"When you got up to Peck, there was nothing there."
O'Connor's classmate, Andrew Dimas, watched the school as it was being built.
"In those days, there wasn't much big around there," he recalled.
Building the Mira Costa campus was a challenge. The site was miles away from sewer and utility lines and the nearest water supply was a quarter-mile away. The roads were all dirt. Compounding matters, a hole 75 feet deep and filled with water occupied the center of the site.
By August 1950, the campus had been constructed sufficiently to allow Lloyd Waller, the school's first principal, to move into his offices. The physical plant consisted of an administration building, 20 classrooms (four rows of classrooms with five classrooms in each row), two shop rooms, gymnasium locker rooms for boys and girls and a combination assembly-study hall-library.
There was no gymnasium and no cafeteria. Those were built a couple of years later with the proceeds from a $1.49 million bond, which was approved March 28, 1950 by a three to one margin. The bond proceeds also paid for an additional 18 classrooms and four shops. (Another bond, for $3 million, passed in Feb. 1959. It would fund construction of a swimming pool and auditorium on campus).
Mira Costa opened its doors to 645 freshmen and sophomores on Sept. 11, 1950. At the school's dedication ceremony 19 days later, school district board president N.R. Kuhn told the throng, "The school buildings which you see are modern in design and they provide the best facilities for the instruction of the youth in our community. They have been planned and built economically and at the same time constructed in such a manner that they will endure for generations."
Dimas remembered how he felt when he first spied the flat, one-story buildings.
"It was minimalism as far as a high school goes, but we quickly became a family," he said.
The majority of Mira Costa's first student body didn't want to attend the school. The sophomores had been freshmen at Redondo Union when boundary drawing forced them to attend the new school. And the incoming freshmen had yearned to go to the big, established school for so long that their diversion to Mira Costa was something of a letdown.
"I didn't really want to go to Mira Costa, but had no choice," said original sophomore Bill Kelly. "But after a few weeks, I realized it would be a great situation. We were the senior class on campus for three years. We were able to establish a lot of the traditions - mottoes, songs, things like that."
When the first students arrived, the school name and its mascot had been decided. The school board thought that the school should have a name that not only reflected its area's Spanish origin but was also descriptive of the site. Redondo High Spanish instructor Richard Gonzales submitted a list of Spanish phrases. The board selected the name Mira Costa, which means "Look at coast," even though the coast was not visible from campus.
Cecelia Whitespear, a member of the Class of 1953, was the original Mustang, naming the school's mascot.
Within two weeks, student body elections were held. O'Connor was voted the school's first student body president.
"I can't tell you I'm the champion of any cause, but everything was new then," he recalled. "The only thing we had was the name Mira Costa and the name Mustangs. Everything else was voted on by the students or the student council."
The first year, the school's colors of green and gold were selected. Students chose "La Vista" as the name of the school newspaper over Riptide and The Surf. And the school motto was submitted by Eleanor Carr: "We are the foundation. Upon us the nation will rest."
English and public speaking teacher Helen Fowler, part of an outstanding faculty in those early years, was a moving force at the new school.
"She wrote all the school songs and really got us off to a good start," Dimas said.
Many of the original students recalled that there were hardships at the first-year school, especially when it came to sports.
"We had no gym," said Jerry Parker. "Playing basketball, we were bused to Alondra Park to the public gym every day. We played our home games at Redondo."
"We didn't have a football stadium," added star football player Joe Zeller. "The games were at Redondo High. We used classrooms for some of the sports. Wrestling took place in the math wing."
They persevered as the school grew. By 1952, Mira Costa was a four-year school with 1,400 students (By 1956, it would have more than 2,500 students, 400 more than the enrollment in 1999-2000).
In June 1953, more than 300 seniors and 50 faculty members gathered at El Camino College for the first commencement. The seniors carried with them fond memories of their days in green and gold.
For Kelly, Parker and Zeller, the memories included glory on the gridiron or hardwood. For O'Connor and Kaye Schwartz O'Connor, they were of the day their eyes first met in 1950, the day Tim O'Connor thought, "This is a girl I might like to meet." For Earl Larcom, it was the day he hit champion surfer Dewey Weber in the back with a water balloon.
"He was strutting around with two girls, wearing his lettermen's jacket when I hit him," Larcom said.
In an unsigned Open Letter to the Class of 1953, published in the 1953 yearbook, were the following words: "So you see, there is a lesson worth learning - you were here when these things were named. You know the people who named them. You have played your part well. Never forget that the part you have played in the founding of this new high school has been an important one and you have laid the foundation; the building will go up slowly but surely through the years."
How it is
Step onto the high school campus today at Mira Costa and it becomes apparent quickly that this is a physical plant in need of an upgrade. Fifty-year-old, one-story, pale-yellow concrete classroom buildings stretch one after another throughout the grounds, creating a drab, almost institutional setting.
What in 1950 was a sparkling new school has surrendered to the erosion of time. It has also seen the hard charge of technology pass it by.
The library is substandard, with insufficient space for circulating books. Increased computer stations have reduced the library's open space and restricted the stack and research areas. There are no large lecture areas available, and space for the performing arts is woefully inadequate.
The few courtyards scattered about the campus do not inspire student interaction for curricular or extracurricular activities. And many of the athletic facilities are laughable. Venerable Fisher Gymnasium, a creaky, throwback to the 1950's, is less than one-half the size of the gymnasium at the new Middle School.
The $47 million modernization bond passed in 1995 for all Manhattan Beach schools can only go so far at the high school. To date, bond monies have paid for roof repairs, earthquake-safe window replacement, new science classrooms and new technology infrastructure. The auditorium has been rehabilitated and a new swimming pool built using related Certificate of Participation dollars.
Over the next two and a half years, modernization work at Mira Costa will continue, paid for by 1995 bond dollars earmarked for the high school. Buildings will get new paint inside and out, infrastructure upgrades, roof replacement as needed, new flooring and carpet, asbestos abatement as needed, wall renovation and other work designed to comply with safety and Americans with Disabilities Acts standards, among other things.
But the 1995 bond cannot pay for additional classrooms or create smaller classrooms for new curriculum standards. It cannot improve the campus to the level of a modern high school or even compete with the new $21 million Middle School for amenities.
"Modernization is one thing, but catching up and staying a state-of-the-art high school is another thing," explained school superintendent Jerry Davis. "Parents went to the Middle School and saw what bond dollars would do beyond basic renovation and now want that for their high school."
"When we went out for our $47.275 million bond measure, the voters never recognized that that wasn't our needs assessment," deputy superintendent Scott Smith explained. "It's the amount we could get passed."
How it will be
In July, the school board approved a resolution to submit a $26 million bond to the voters Nov. 7. Since March 1999, a Mira Costa Facilities Committee has been hard at work with architects creating a Master Plan for the school. Through hard work and harder choices, new construction on campus has been whittled to seven projects. Plans for a new gymnasium have been scrapped.
"We're not gilding the lily," Gaudineer said.
If passed, the bond would complete the repair and renovation of Mira Costa. It would pay for construction of two new two-story classroom buildings, one of which would contain a 250-seat lecture theater and space for practice and instruction in the music program; a 14,000-square-foot library with media center; a student services/administration building, a field house, and cafeteria expansion, in phases from 2001 through January 2004. Hardscaping of the campus to make it more pedestrian friendly, improve gathering spaces and re-orient the school towards Artesia Boulevard, through the use of walkways, pavilions and plazas, would also be accomplished.
The new classroom buildings would replace some portables that have been on campus for years. It would also add classrooms lost due to the science labs or to class size reduction.
"We need more classrooms for the same sized student body," Gaudineer said.
The library would be constructed at the heart of the campus. "It will replace a woefully inadequate library that we now have," said Mira Costa principal Lynn McCormack.
Support for the bond is high, according to polling conducted by the school district. And the price of $15.86 per $100,000 of assessed property valuation each year for 30 years is a modest sum for Manhattan Beach residents to pay for a modern school.
If the new bond doesn't pass Nov. 7, Davis said it would be close to impossible for the school district to accumulate reserves to renovate the high school.
"Most of the new money coming into the district, other than earmarked money, is pass-through money going to salaries," he explained.
So it is with hopes high and fingers crossed that district personnel awaits election day Nov. 7, the day when Manhattan Beach decides what its high school, the one first built in 1950, will become. McCormack is confident that voters will pass the bond.
"This will take us to the next 10 years and hopefully the next 50 years," she said. ER