CASH-STRAPPED DISTRICT SPENDING PLENTY OF MONEY.

Byline: Carol Rock Staff Writer

ACTON - The Acton-Agua Dulce Unified School District hopes to hire a few more consultants to help solve the facilities quagmire facing its schools.

In June, the cash-strapped district hired Susan Stuart to lobby for ``hardship'' funding for Vasquez High School - for $10,000. The district already belongs to California Declining Enrollment Coalition, a consortium of districts throughout the state with shifting student populations organized by School Services of California Inc.

``Legislation needs to change, and we need all the help we can get,'' Superintendent Linda Wagner said Wednesday.

The coalition serves as a legislative advocate during budget negotiations and promotes specific legislation targeting assistance for member districts. The annual cost to the district: $2,000.

Addressing the problems at Vasquez High School will be the focus of contractor Bryan Hayes, who handled the inspection of the school after a recent fire and is overseeing the installation of lights on the football field. Hayes has expertise working with state agencies and is being brought in to work on unresolved issues on the Vasquez campus, including the gymnasium that has been shuttered since the fall of 2004. Hayes' hourly rate is $65 to work on an ``as needed'' basis.

Perhaps the largest financial commitment the board will be asked to make is to a company specializing in researching the pedigree of school buildings - an area that has brought the district's progress with the Department of State Architect to a grinding halt.

``Our biggest task is to remedy close-out problems with DSA, and in some of the cases, we've hit a dead end,'' Wagner said of efforts to obtain final permits. ``They told us to bring in an expert so we can get things resolved once and for all.''

Wagner is recommending the district contract with David Johnston of Managing Business Solution Inc. to handle projects pending on all five district campuses.

``We're going to start on the easiest, which I think would be Meadowlark School, and work our way through the system,'' Wagner said. ``There are some buildings that are on one campus now that used to be on another and before that could have been in a district altogether different. That's his job, to follow the paperwork on each building to its point of origination.''

Johnston's initial fee is $1,500 for the evaluation phase, and each file (of which there could be several on each campus) can run from $500 to $2,500. Wagner is asking the board to allocate enough to get the investigation started with the possibility of adding more files as progress is made.

The school board will meet 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the multipurpose room of Meadowlark School, 3015 Sacramento Ave., Acton.

Carol Rock, [phone]

carol.rock(at)dailynews.com