At Santa Cruz High, years of construction drag on with no firm end in sight

When Julia Kennedy returns to Santa Cruz High School each morning, she navigates an ever-changing obstacle course of construction fencing, makeshift pathways and the persistent absence of a cafeteria. As a rising senior, she has never known her campus without construction.

“I feel like I’m missing out on something,” Kennedy said. “It would be kind of nice not to have construction constantly every day.”

For the past four years, what started as an ambitious modernization project by the Santa Cruz City Schools district, backed by bond measures, has transformed Santa Cruz High into what feels like a permanent construction zone, testing the patience of students, teachers and staff. 

Multiple elements of the work, meant to repair, replace and construct several facilities on campus, have been ongoing since mid-2017. However, the renovation of the campus’ cafeteria and home economics building has been a victim of constantly changing timelines for completion since it started in late the summer of 2021.

Years later, it’s still happening, leaving the campus community scrambling for basic necessities, such as lunch spaces. With limited parking, students regularly leave class to move their cars to avoid parking tickets. The school’s dance program bounces among locations, sometimes practicing on concrete quads or football fields. 

District administrators said the construction delays are due to several factors, including the pandemic, weather, unexpected challenges in renovating a historic building and tariffs. 

The district has generally had a good track record of completing projects on time, spokesperson Sam Rolens said. However, work on the cafeteria and home economics building stands out, said Rolens, particularly because it “has been the most frustrating and drawn-out.” 

In the spring, district officials instructed several teachers to begin preparing their classrooms for the transition to the new rooms in the home economics building, which were scheduled to be ready at the end of the summer. 

Then, with three weeks left of summer, district officials told staff they would have to unpack their boxes in their old rooms. Teachers returned to school early to set up their rooms, only to find themselves feeling defeated and without a clear timeline for when the construction would end. 

“From the district standpoint and from the teachers I’ve spoken to, it’s frustrating because these aren’t things that the district, teachers or the administration has any control over,” said Jody Kropholler, co-president of the Greater Santa Cruz Federation of Teachers. “It sounded like mid July was reasonable, and then for a laundry list of reasons that’s turned out not to be the case.” 

District officials have since stopped providing completion timelines after repeatedly missing projected dates, Rolens said. Officials now hold weekly progress meetings but won’t announce an expected finish line “before they cross it,” Rolens said.

“I don’t think there is anything that we can say that will make people feel that much better,” he said. “We’ve been incredibly grateful for the patience they’ve shown us in the past as we keep experiencing setbacks. The only thing that will make people feel better is to have the working spaces.”

The construction projects date back to 2016 when voters passed two bond measures, known as A and B, totalling $208 million, to fund repairs and renovations at Santa Cruz City Schools elementary and high schools. Of that, Santa Cruz High received $33.5 million to help pay to replace aging utilities, along with upgrades to the gym and the cafeteria and home economics building. (District voters passed another $371 million in bonds in 2022 to fund upgrades and build workforce housing, but the current construction at Santa Cruz High is being funded by the earlier bonds.)

When the school community first learned about the modernization projects, the excitement was palpable, teachers said. “I was really gladdened by the idea that students would finally have a nice place to eat their lunches,” said librarian Veronica Zaleha.

Some of the work progressed quickly, such as the remodeling of the gym. However, other aspects, including construction on the cafeteria and the home economics building at the heart of the campus, have run into major delays.

Frustration is boiling over among teachers. Several told Lookout that being promised classrooms only to find out they are unavailable has been physically, emotionally and mentally exhausting. 

“I feel like I have no expectation for when it will be done,” said Zaleha, who has been a librarian at Santa Cruz High for 15 years. After she returned to school following the 2020-21 pandemic shutdown, she remembered leaping over gravel trenches as pipes were being replaced.

With the cafeteria closed for renovations, the school’s food services workers have been operating out of a food truck since August 2021, but its small awning leaves students exposed to rain while waiting in line. 

This has been exhausting the whole campus staff, especially in the library. Zaleha’s job, like many others on campus, has changed from librarian to lunch monitor. The library, meant to be a quiet study space, now hosts up to 150 students during lunch, swelling to 200 on rainy days. 

Students will also often line the hallways to eat lunch. Another teacher said she regularly finds students sitting on the floor or eating in their cars.

The old cafeteria was previously used as a multipurpose room, hosting standardized testing, club meetings, sports gatherings and administrative functions. Since it’s been closed, those activities have shifted to other available spaces, such as the auditorium and the library. 

Elizabeth Gentile, a teacher who also directs the school’s dance program, said dancers have regularly been displaced from the auditorium and have scrambled to find practice space in areas such as hallways, classrooms and the softball field. 

Fencing and piles of dirt and materials from the construction site have also blocked about 15 of the 20 spots on Weeks Avenue, one of the three parking areas at the school. Due to the lack of space, students are constantly asking to be excused from class to move their cars or potentially risk $60 parking tickets after being forced to park in spots with a two-hour time limit. 

The construction delays are colliding with a separate issue at the school: a planned $125 million districtwide heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) upgrade. Without functioning air conditioning, temperatures in some Santa Cruz High classrooms, especially on the third floor of the main building, can reach 85 degrees. The district has provided fans to try to help, said Rolens, but teachers have reported that they are ineffective in lowering the temperatures. 

“You can’t effectively teach if it’s over 80 degrees regularly for the first handful of months,” said Matt Bruner, co-president of the teachers union.

Rolens said many of the challenges Santa Cruz High has faced are outside of the district’s control. 

Some stem from the age of the facilities, which were built in the early 1900s. The buildings were so old that the city didn’t even have maps showing the locations of major electrical, water, sewage and gas lines. The decision to renovate the home economics building — rather than tearing it down and designing a new one from scratch — also slowed progress. Bringing the buildings up to current California building codes has proved challenging. 

Weather has also been a problem, including a series of wet winters that have delayed construction and hot summers that have made air conditioning a more urgent issue at the school. Historically, the school hasn’t needed air conditioning, but the past several years have seen exceptionally sweltering starts to the school year. HVAC upgrades to the school haven’t yet been scheduled, and Rolens said the district traditionally likes to give schools a break between lengthy construction projects. 

The district prioritizes construction work at times of the year when students aren’t in class, such as during summer or winter breaks. But over the past summer, unexpected challenges further delayed the project. The primary state architecture inspector assigned to the project was injured and was off work for two weeks. The state assigned a new inspector, who took time to get up to speed on the job. “So when we were kind of hoping to be in a final sprint, we had to stop for a couple of weeks and let things happen very slowly,” Rolens said. 

The Trump administration’s ever-changing tariffs policies have also caused supply chain issues, further disrupting timelines, Rolens said. He pointed to an order of electrical wire that was out of stock without warning, and furniture that was never delivered because the company suddenly went out of business as examples of how limited access to materials essential have further slowed momentum. 

“There have been a number of times where we’ve been given optimistic estimates that we didn’t know were over-optimistic,” Rolens said. 

The construction company contracted to do the work has not provided the district with an updated timeline for the project, simply because it too is exhausted by constantly getting it wrong. However, Rolens added that the district is still hopeful the construction will end soon, and that teachers who were ready to move into the new building will be able to soon. 

“They were asked to, if possible, not unpack everything, because we’re still optimistic,” Rolens said. But, he added, “we don’t want to build ourselves up for disappointment by estimating the amount of time that we have left.”

After stalls, delays and timeline changes, students like Julia Kennedy are hoping to be able to see construction finally come to an end before they graduate. 

“I feel a little bit like I’m missing out on something,” Kennedy said. “It would be kind of nice not to have construction constantly every day. I feel like it would make our school feel nicer.” 

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