Frustrated Parents Press for Completion of School in Oak Park : Education: They criticize board members for abandoning construction schedules and considering ways to cut expenses for the state-of-the-art campus.

About 20 Oak Park parents, frustrated by construction delays at Red Oak School have demanded that the Oak Park school board get on with the project and deliver a state-of-the-art school before the end of the school year.

In an angry confrontation with the board Tuesday night, parents sharply criticized board members for abandoning long-planned construction schedules and considering ways to cut costs in finishing the $4.5-million elementary school.

“I can’t stand it any more,” said Lindy Heidt, a parent involved in the school. “Stop with the low bids. We’ve got the bond capacity. Let’s get on with this construction!”

The board, which rejected dozens of bids to complete construction because they were over-budget, announced last week that it would scale back the project to save money.

That decision infuriated parents who are already frustrated by the two-week delay in opening the partially completed school this fall, and a lack of facilities, such as a full library, computer lab, music room, outdoor amphitheater, administrative offices and multipurpose room.

“Just give us our school,” said Bonnie Reese, who has a third-grader at Red Oak. “This is government at its worst, and our children are suffering.”

But Assistant Supt. Stan Mantooth said the administration must proceed cautiously because it has to consider all Oak Park residents when spending the district’s money.

“I can understand the parents’ frustration,” Mantooth said. “But we need to be responsible to everyone. The (financial) interests of people who don’t have kids in the district need to be protected.”

The latest obstacle to finishing the final phase of the project surfaced last month when bids on more than a dozen separate contracts came in at $500,000 higher than the $2.7-million budget. As a result, the board asked the architect to scale back the original plans in an effort to cut $200,000 to $300,000 in costs.

Jim Stinson, an architect with the Agoura Hills firm of Porter, Stinson, Miller, admitted to being “pretty shocked” when the bids arrived.

In an emotional apology to the parents, Stinson took responsibility for the delay, which he blamed in part on the state approval process.

“I’ve been up nights working on this stuff for you guys,” Stinson told the parents, “and I’m sorry we haven’t been able to meet this schedule. I’m sorry you’re so upset. If you want someone to blame, it’s my fault.”

But Mike Kooyman, construction manager for PCM3, the management consulting firm handling the project, said Stinson does not deserve the blame. Instead, he attributed the cost overruns partly to the expense of the high-quality lumber that the state requires schools to use.

Mantooth said Stinson would present his recommendations for scaling back the project at the board’s Dec. 14 meeting.

Under the modified schedule, advertisements for new bids would be placed in early January, the bids would be opened Jan. 15 and the board would decide which ones to accept Jan. 18, Mantooth said.

“Theoretically, we lost six weeks off our drop-dead date to finish the school of July 31, 1994,” Mantooth said. “We’d like to think that we could make the six weeks up at the end, but we’re expecting a delay of about two months, which means we may need August and September to build.”

The school, with an enrollment of about 280 students, now has 13 classrooms, three of which are being used for office space, the library and teachers lounge. With new development going on in the area, the school is expected to grow by another 60 students next year, Mantooth said.

Mantooth said construction plans include seven more classrooms to be completed by April.

But completion of other facilities, such as the amphitheater, music room, multipurpose room and library, would be delayed.

Those delays prompted many parents to say that they felt betrayed by the district’s handling of the project. They spoke angrily at having to move their children from the nationally recognized Oak Hills School to the relative chaos at Red Oak.

“We still really don’t have a school,” said Tami Lawler, president of the Red Oak site management council, a group of parents and teachers who keep watch over school activities. Specifically, she complained that the school cannot bring together students in one place for spirit-building assemblies because the multipurpose room has not been built.