La Joya Elementary School

Location: Salinas, CA

Year: Completed in 2014

Budget: $4,200,000

The Santa Rita Union School District embarked upon the seismic retrofit of La Joya Elementary School following publication of the list of school sites that included Category 2 buildings, indicating that the La Joya School had seismic deficiencies. The proposed project included structural improvements to 10 classrooms, the administration building, library, computer lab, and all walkway canopies. Student and staff safety was of utmost importance to the District in their decision to move ahead with the Seismic Mitigation Program.

The WMA team discovered that the original masonry walls were not properly connected to the roof diaphragm and the roof joists were sagging. Sister joists and hold-downs were installed to strengthen the roof structure and properly tie the joists to the walls. An extensive number of canopies were also directly attached to the masonry walls and needed to be separated from these walls using flexible seismic joints. The existing access to the administration building was problematic, so an opportunity presented itself to improve safe access to the site with a new front entry design. Additional life safety requirements were also installed, such as improved accessibility across the campus and a new fire alarm system.

The team coordinated all the documentation required for the DSA submittal, including structural drawings and calculations for seismic evaluation, access compliance and fire life safety drawings and specifications as well as CDE and OPSC submittals. The process began in the fall of 2012 and the required steps took several months and multiple review sessions before being deemed complete and ready for DSA submittal in early 2013.

The District chose the Design, Bid, Build approach and General Contractor, Tombleson Inc., was selected. The Construction Team and District implemented safety measures to ensure the safety of all students, staff, parents, and community members during construction onsite.

Although rehabilitation of the mechanical system was not part of the original project, the old and very inefficient mechanical units and ducts presented the District with an opportunity to secure Proposition 39 funding to replace all of the classroom mechanical heating units with higher efficiency models as well as using the SMP program.

The project was successfully completed in early 2014, 15 months from inception, and final OPSC funding was received on June 30, 2014. The Design and Construction teams assisted the District in ensuring that both the schedule and budget were met, and the collaborative approach of all of the state agencies, OPSC, CDE, and DSA, was implicit to this success.

The District’s vision to rehabilitate the school using the Seismic Mitigation Program, Financial Hardship funding and Proposition 39 funding resulted in a safer, more energy efficient, and beautifully modernized school that the students, staff and community value.