DISTRICT TO MODERNIZE EASTSIDE ELEMENTARY.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Daily News Staff Writer

Eastside Union School District has decided on a $2 million refurbishment of Eastside School, an elementary school built in 1947 that needs to be brought up to building codes and modernized.

The project will be paid for with funds from the school district's $15.5 million voter-approved 1997 bond measure and matching funds from the $9.2 billion state school construction bond measure passed last month.

``It's just old and antiquated,'' Superintendent Connie Webb said of the school that shares its 70th Street East and Avenue H campus with administrative offices and Cole Middle School. ``It is missing some of the modern conveniences and amenities of life.''

The budget and scope of the school's modernization was approved by the board of trustees last week.

The work will begin in the fall of 2000, after the middle school's sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders are moved to their new campus at 30th Street East and Avenue I.

The district administration, which is now using classroom space, will move its offices into a 5,000-square-foot modular building on the new middle school campus. That $500,000 project will be paid for with Lancaster redevelopment funds.

The new district office will be a more convenient location for the majority of the district's residents, making it easier for people to access district services and attend school board meetings, district officials said.

Eastside School has first through fifth grades and an enrollment of 575.

``It is completely redoing the school, which means when you do modernization with the state, they mandate certain things,'' Webb said.

The work includes installing new roofing and air conditioning to replace swamp coolers, providing wheelchair accessibility, and refurbishing restrooms by replacing fixtures and improving sewer lines.

In the classrooms, workers will replace chalkboards with dry-erase whiteboards, refurbish cabinetry, and change lighting to meet new lighting standards.

New acoustic paneling will be installed in the cafeteria.

``Right now it echoes like crazy,'' Webb said.

Plans also call for converting the school's multipurpose room into a new library. The current library is housed in a portable classroom.

Construction will start this month on the $9.5 million Cole Middle School campus.

Opened in the late 1980s to meet enrollment growth brought on by the Antelope Valley building boom, Cole Middle School is now in the original Eastside School building and in portable classrooms.

The district's bond measure was approved by Eastside voters in November 1997. It adds $32 per $100,000 assessed value to property owners' annual tax bills.