Common sense beats elevator

By Suzanne Roig
Advertiser East Honolulu Writer

At Kamiloiki Elementary's Building C, Cindy Lambe's art class, left, is separated from Terrie Kamo's second-graders by a low divider. It's a holdover from a learning concept that called for big rooms with two classes and three teachers. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

The state Department of Accounting and General Services is rethinking its decision requiring an elevator before work could proceed on second-floor classroom renovations that teachers and the administration have wanted for a decade.

The school will still need an elevator at some point, said DAGS comptroller Russ Saito, but may be able to perform its second-floor work without one, provided that other conditions involving accessibility are met.

"We are looking at the project again because we were not aware of all the nuances of the law," he said, referring to the federal Americans With Disabilities Act. "We'll need a complete accounting of the costs."

Kamiloiki Elementary finally had the money and was ready to proceed with long-sought work — partitioning large classrooms shared by two or more classes.

Then came the DAGS stipulation that the scope of the work would require an elevator.

The directive was part of a long-term state effort to comply with federal accessibility requirements. It was a rare requirement for a school not undergoing wholesale renovation, Saito said.

The order dismayed not just the school but the Department of Education, an area lawmaker and even an attorney who specializes in personal injury, civil rights and legal issues involving disability. None saw a need for an elevator.

Honolulu attorney Lunsford Phillips said common sense — not strict adherence to rules and regulations —Êshould dictate the need for elevators.

"This project does not seem to pass the common-sense test when you are requiring an elevator in a school that is putting in partitions in existing classrooms," Phillips said.

Principal Loretta Yee said the school doesn't have students with accessibility needs and, in previous instances, accommodated the needs of the disabled by moving classes for such students to the ground floor.

Because installing an elevator would use up nearly all of the $200,000 allocated for classroom renovations, Yee put the second-floor work on hold and planned to proceed with changes on the first floor only.

Last week came word that perhaps all the work could proceed.

In Building A, a permanent wall separates Corinne Wingert's classroom for gifted and talented students from the computer lab. They used to be one large room. Accessibility laws have complicated plans for renovations that would separate more classrooms. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

The state will have to ensure that at least 20 percent of the work done meets federal wheelchair accessibility standards until the school can attain full compliance, he said. After the renovation, all of the chalkboards, light switches and drinking fountains must be accessible to students in wheelchairs. If these conditions cannot be met for the $200,000 budgeted, then it's back to doing just the ground-floor classrooms, Saito said.

In explaining why an elevator had been required, Saito said the rule applied when more than 50 percent of the building's classroom space would undergo renovation.

Federal rules call for different levels of compliance, depending on the kind of construction being done at a school, Saito said. A regular repair and maintenance project, for example where a chalkboard is removed and replaced with another, doesn't require wholesale accessibility. At the other end of the spectrum, everything must be accessible when a new school is built.

Statewide, 82 schools were chosen in 1986 for renovations to meet accessibility requirements. The state has completed accessibility renovations at 55 of those schools to bring them into compliance with the federal law — work that cost $74.2 million, said Nick Nichols, state Department of Education facility planner. The state anticipates spending $33.4 million more to bring the remaining 27 schools into compliance.

"We probably have spent more money than any other state on the accessibility issue," he said.

But Kamiloiki is not among those schools. Its need for an elevator was identified during a review of its proposal for renovations in what Nichols called a strict interpretation of accessibility guidelines.

With repair and maintenance problems dogging Hawai'i's schools — the backlog of work needed stands at about $675 million — spending money on an elevator while holding up other improvements didn't sit well with some people.

"It is sad to see my own elementary school caught up like this," said state Rep. Bud Stonebraker, R-17th (Hawai'i Kai, Kalama Valley). "Both teachers and students deserve better than they've been treated."

The DOE has always interpreted the law to mean that accessibility shouldn't come at the expense of the project, Nichols said.

Still, the law is intended to provide access, period. It applies even if a school doesn't have a student or a group of students requiring access, Saito said.

"It's complicated," Saito said. "We try to make things ADA-compliant, but with the economy having a hard time, it cuts into the funds and pushes back the projects further and further."

Kamiloiki Elementary was built in 1971 for a teaching concept that called for two classes and three teachers in one room, Yee said. That concept quickly fell by the wayside in favor of the more traditional practice of one teacher assigned per class, she said. But the facilities have been slow to change.

For 10 years the school has worked to install partitions to turn its large multi-class rooms into single-class rooms. Where that work has not yet been performed, teachers and students still have to deal with the din caused by two classes using one room, with only bookcases and bulletin boards to divide the classes.

More than half of the state's 280-plus public schools are multilevel, and a good percentage do not have elevators.

Multi-storied schools aren't required to have elevators, Nichols said. Some schools can use ramps or chair lifts — much cheaper remedies — to meet accessibility requirements. The elevator is the most expensive of the three options, coming in at about $160,000, said Nichols.

Nichols said the elevator requirement is not common for projects the size of Kamiloiki. Elevators usually come into play only when the state begins wholesale renovations of old schools to make all classrooms accessible to wheelchairs, he said.

But when the classrooms are specialized, such as science labs, schools have found that they must install an elevator to make those rooms available to all students, Nichols said. That happened at Pearl City High School, where an elevator as well as chair lifts needed to be installed to make these special classrooms available to all, he said. That work is still in progress.

The intent of the state's community access board is to be flexible and not make the process of accessibility onerous, Nichols said.

"Our first priority is to eliminate the need for an elevator," Nichols said. "We only put them in when it's necessary to access a program, like science, home-economics or computer labs.

"Based on the limited funds, the board's general stance has been not to kill a project, but to try to help people build a project that would make it accessible."

Meantime, pending its waiver request and approval from DAGS, Kamiloiki Elementary School plans to go ahead with the construction of partitions in ground-floor classrooms. Yee said construction is tentatively scheduled to begin in April 2004 and end in June.

The work will include dividing classrooms with a solid wall, installing doors linking the classrooms, and adding sinks in each classroom.

Reach Suzanne Roig at sroig@honoluluadvertiser.com or 395-8831.