San Diego Unified Promised to Fix a School’s Plumbing 14 Years Ago. It’s Still Leaking 

On a crisp spring morning, three boys sat on a cinderblock wall in front of the School of Creative and Performing Arts in Paradise Hills. Staff and students at the magnet school, often referred to as SCPA, have been grappling with recurring plumbing failures. Those failures required porta-potties and bottled water to be shipped to the campus. 

“It’s been temporarily fixed, but the problems always come back,” one boy said in between bites of Jack in the Box french fries. “They should just fix it already. People here need water.”  

“It’s nasty,” another boy said, referring to the porta-potties. “There’s pee all over them,” he said with a laugh.  

For some, though, the plumbing situation is no laughing matter. From February to March, the district fully or partially shut off water at the campus about a half dozen times due to infrastructure failures.  

Emails obtained by Voice of San Diego underscore the frustration felt by staff members. One teacher named Will Carter described a “pattern of repeated infrastructure failure that the district has failed to permanently resolve.” 

“Three months of recurring outages — at a school with a documented history of plumbing failures — is not a temporary emergency,” Carter wrote. “A sewage backup through concrete pipes on school grounds — in front of occupied buildings — constitutes a direct biohazard exposure event.” 

District spokesperson Samer Naji disputed that characterization. In an email, he wrote that SCPA’s leaks were of water lines, not wastewater or sewer systems.  

“There has been no biohazard exposure,” Naji wrote. 

But district spokespeople acknowledge the plumbing situation hasn’t been ideal, and that a comprehensive renovation is years off. 

Many at SCPA are struggling to understand why any of this is happening in the first place. After all voters approved a nearly $3 billion bond in 2012 that promised a fix. In the years since, voters approved two more bonds that district leaders said would tackle the issue. Those three bond measures gave the district nearly $10 billion to spend on construction.  

A decade and a half later, though, SCPA is still waiting for its plumbing fix. And now, district leaders are gearing up to put another bond measure on the ballot later this year.  

Bonds, Bonds, Bonds 

The district’s $2.8 billion bond measure in 2012 promised to “repair or replace aged/deteriorated plumbing and sewer systems” at nearly every single San Diego Unified school. It specifically cited SCPA as a school where the plumbing would be updated. 

Six years after that, the district copied and pasted that exact language into Measure YY, a $3.5 billion bond. Once again, officials specifically promised a fix at SCPA. That November, 65 percent of San Diego voters approved the measure. 

Four years after that, voters approved another bond, the $3.2 billion Measure U. The district once again promised to “repair or replace deteriorating plumbing and underground sewer systems.” 

Despite those promises, a fix never came. 

The Long Wait for a Big Fix 

District officials don’t plan to do comprehensive work on SCPA’s plumbing until late 2028 or early 2029, when the school is slated to be fully renovated. 

For some staff at SCPA, though, that timeline doesn’t seem quick enough.  

In one email, Carter wrote that the coming modernization does not excuse the district from “its legal and contractual obligation to address the current, active safety and environmental maintenance needs in a timely manner.” 

“Staff and students cannot wait through a multi-year modernization planning and construction timeline while operating in conditions that do not meet basic health, safety, and sanitation standards today,” Carter continued.  

Jamie Ries, another spokesperson for San Diego Unified, wrote in an email that all but one “small leak” has been repaired by district maintenance staff. The only negative impact of that ongoing leak was “a small wet area on the lawn,” she continued.  

But she admitted that scheduling fixes for the multiple leaks has been challenging.  

Renovated plumbing is far from the only unfulfilled promise at SCPA. In 2012’s Measure Z, the district listed nearly 20 renovations the bond would bring to SCPA. Measure YY, passed six years later, duplicated much of that project list and added a couple more priorities. 

Nearly 14 years later, only a handful of those projects have been completed, according to district officials. Of the 20 projects listed on Measure YY (a dozen of which carried over from a previous bond) less than half have been completed. Those included installing a new emergency communications system, electrical upgrades, solar energy systems and a renovation of the school’s performing arts facilities. 

While public entities are usually required to spend bond money on the types of projects they listed as priorities while pitching their measures, they aren’t required to complete every project listed in their proposals. 

A big reason for the neglect at SCPA has been uncertainty. For years, district officials have been considering moving the high school campus downtown. That effort was ultimately abandoned after district leaders deemed it unrealistic. Staff at SCPA also backed a full renovation rather than wait to see if the relocation dream materialized.  

With the San Diego Community College District stepping into the civic core redevelopment void left by city officials, though, talks may start again.  

Another Bond on the Horizon

Even as staff and students wait for the long-promised renovation, some cosmetic fixes have been going forward. According to multiple SCPA staff members, district maintenance workers have been painting buildings. The choice to touch up coats of paint before doing the hard work of infrastructure fixes doesn’t sit well with some staff members. 

This is far from the first time San Diego Unified’s spending priorities have raised eyebrows. During the 2010s, the district consistently directed its multi-billion-dollar treasure chest of bond money toward upgrades of athletic facilities, like new football fields, rather than rotting infrastructure at some schools. Between 2009 and 2015, nearly half of the bond money spent went toward athletic facilities. And despite repeated promises to fix and install air conditioning at all schools, some district students have still dealt with hot classrooms in recent years.  

Last year, a San Diego County grand jury report substantiated many of the frustrations expressed by the district’s critics over the years. The report found that measures duplicated previous funding priorities and commingled funds from various bond programs in ways that may have confused voters. 

Still, San Diego Unified officials don’t seem to be sweating. Longtime San Diego Unified Trustee Richard Barrera said district officials are putting together a plan for a new bond measure – despite still having nearly $4 billion in untapped revenue from previous bond measures, according to one report. 

It’s not certain, but Barrera said the “odds are high” a new bond will appear on the ballot in November. And while a new measure may allow the district to speed up work on previous bond priorities, Barrera said nothing much will change.  

The focus would still be on school-specific projects and site modernizations, which will never run out. Schools start aging the second the last brick is laid, so even those that were completely remodeled 25 years ago with funds from 1998’s Proposition MM may be in need of a renovation. 

“The conversation is always about the state of our facilities, so the basic message would be what it has been for the last several bond campaigns, that our schools continue to have needs,” Barrera said. 

That’s why, despite frustrations about unfulfilled promises, Barrera is confident that, like every bond measure in the 21^st century, this one will also pass. In fact, he thinks leaks like SCPA’s may increase the likelihood voters approve a new measure. 

“Bond measures pass or fail… based on how much voters believe that there’s a need,” Barrera said. “The fact that there are unmet needs makes it more likely that they’re going to want to vote to continue the bond program.” 

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