Via the Daily News comes the troubling news that some of those schools that the Los Angeles Unified School District is building may be going up without full-time inspectors. The problem is the district laid off 37 of its 112 state-certified inspectors last year. Here's the scene, according to the Daily News which reports that one "inspector said he was recently assigned to visit a campus where contractors working on a renovation project were releasing toxic dust as they cut cement slabs during school hours.
'The contractors had respirators, and the kids were just running around,' the inspector said.
A third inspector said he made an unofficial visit to a building site and found that students headed for the cafeteria had to be escorted on a detour that took them off campus in order to avoid the construction." As the paper points out, in 2007, LAUSD paid $10.3 million to the family of a student killed by a car in a school parking lot in Encino. "The jury found that the parking lot had not been built according to state-approved designs." Voters have approved billions in bond measures to help pay for the construction of new schools and renovation of existing buildings.
· LAUSD short of inspectors [Daily News]
· LAUSD Archives [Curbed LA]
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