Departure of LA Unified school construction chief causes concern

Guy Mehula, the chief of the Los Angeles Unified School District's highly successful school construction program, has retired.

A decade ago, many critics considered the program incompetent after it botched construction of a massive new school. The school district hired Mehula and other retired U.S. Navy officers with construction expertise to turn the division around. Fed by $20 billion in voter approved bonds, the division's gone on to build scores of new campuses and has garnered dozens of construction industry and design awards. Observers don’t think Mehula's departure bodes well for the future of L.A. Unified’s construction program.

A few days ago, an auditorium brimming with students, parents, and school district administrators celebrated the opening of the 1,200-student Anton Elementary School in East Los Angeles.

As 17 kindergarteners wearing paper bird beaks flapped their arms on a gleaming new stage, Yolie Flores Aguilar, who represents this area on the L.A. Unified Board of Education, gushed about the district’s facilities division and its chief, Guy Mehula. "For his seven years or more of dedicated service of leadership, of vision, of laser-like focus, something I’ve learned from him, we’ve all learned from him."

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Minutes earlier, 56-year-old Mehula had gathered a huddle of middle aged men in suits just outside the auditorium. He said this is the team that made this school happen – project managers, contractors, and others.

Mehula, a civil engineer with a 29-year Navy career under his belt, said he joined L.A. Unified to help children out of crowded, aging classrooms. "I’m proud of so many things. I mean, you look at the 80 new schools, the 134 schools that are off of multi-track calendars, that’s several hundred thousand kids that now between the relieved school and the new school have an appropriate place to go to school, I’m really proud of that."

That’s about as introspective as Mehula gets at his last campus ribbon cutting as facilities chief. One of the men in his huddle, former school board member David Tokofsky, praised the construction program’s progress on Mehula’s watch. "This edifice buildout in L.A. Unified is one of the greatest work projects since the Roman Empire."

L.A. Unified observers say Mehula’s leaving because he disagrees with changes top administrators want to make to the facilities division. He wouldn’t confirm or deny those comments. "For me, I’ve accomplished a lot and it was time to go on to the next set of challenges in there. But it is important for this program to continue to succeed. And I hope everybody realizes what helped make it succeed."

Civil rights lawyer Connie Rice, who’s also a KPCC board member, said that success resulted largely from the division’s near-total autonomy from the school district’s administration, bureaucracy, and internal politics. For years she’s served on the district’s construction bond oversight committee and has defended the division’s autonomy from critics inside L.A. Unified.

"I’ve heard that resentment. 'Well how come they... well they’re part of the district.' And I said, no they’re not, they’re separate from you. They’re not the district, that’s why they’re successful." Rice said she’s troubled by Mehula’s departure and any effort to tinker with the facilities division’s structure.

The facilities division manages 6,000 employees. It handles its own contracts with its own law office of about a dozen attorneys. A proposal to change the division could come from L.A. Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines. He said the division cannot remain separate.

"I do believe that there is an independence but it goes with interdependence. You cannot separate this building from education. You cannot separate the facilities division from all of the other aspects of this school district."

About $7 billion in publicly approved construction funds remain at the ready for future school projects. For now, the construction professionals in facilities have the biggest say in the way L.A. Unified will use that money.