Fire Officials Hit Roof Over School Repairs

The teachers had headaches, the students felt nauseated and some youngsters even had spots of asphalt on their clothing after a company came to a Compton elementary school during class hours to repair a roof.

The Fire Department warned that work should be performed after school hours because the repairs were creating health problems. The roofing company foreman balked. Compton Fire Chief Milford Fonza then personally took the man into custody Tuesday, handcuffing him at McNair Elementary School and putting him in the back of a police car.

School officials said Wednesday that they might seek a temporary restraining order to block the Fire Department from monitoring the roofers so work could continue during school hours.

They maintain that daytime roofing is needed so that repairs can be made before the next rainstorm, which is predicted to arrive tonight. Officials also said the state fire marshal--not the city fire chief--has jurisdiction over schools.

The conflict is just the latest saga in a prolonged battle between Compton city officials and Randolph E. Ward, the state-appointed school superintendent who has been the focus of controversy since he was named to oversee the district in late 1996.

Most city officials and residents want to see Compton’s struggling schools return to local control. Mayor Omar Bradley has vowed to retake the schools by the end of the year.

Compton Unified is the only school district in California taken over by the state because of economic and academic deficiencies. The state--not the local school district--controls the purse strings and the curriculum.

The district came under state jurisdiction in 1993 as a condition for receiving $20 million in emergency state loans.

Last year, the state allocated $4.5 million to repair more than half of the roofs at 36 school buildings.

Roofs on five buildings at McNair Elementary were being repaired when the fire marshal received several complaints last week about strong fumes coming from the project, Fonza said.

When Fire Marshal Marvin Porter visited the school Thursday, he saw a caldron of hot asphalt and believed that it was causing the headaches and nausea, the fire chief said.

He also realized that the contractors, Best Roofing Co. of Torrance, did not have a city permit to operate a propane-ignited boiler for heating the roofing material, Fonza said.

An agreement was reached with school officials last Thursday that repairs would be performed during non-school hours and a permit would be obtained, Fonza said.

On Monday, however, roofing continued at the request of school district officials. Fire officials again visited the site and noticed children playing near the hot asphalt and specks of tar on some of their clothing, Fonza said.

The work continued Tuesday, prompting the fire chief to visit the school. He confronted John Darrell French, 45, the foreman, about working during school hours and not having a city permit.

“Mr. French informed me he didn’t care who I was,” Fonza said. “He was not going to take direction from anyone other than the people who paid him to do this job.”

With that, Fonza handcuffed French and put him in the back of a police car. The foreman was cited for three misdemeanor violations of the city fire code and released.

French, who has repaired roofs at 16 other Compton schools this year, said his crews always worked during school hours to repair the badly damaged roofs that have become more fragile with the recent heavy rains.

School district officials are upset because they finally are repairing some of the most neglected schools in the state and have run up against a roadblock.

“My top priority is to keep our schools and students safe while making much-needed repairs as quickly and efficiently as possible,” Ward said in a statement.