A FISH TALE: Cabrillo High School's Aquarium Gets a New Facility.

It may take a village to raise a child, but it has taken a community to turn one high school's dream of a marine science program into a state-of-the-art aquarium.

What began about 15 years ago, as a partnership between one student and one teacher to study the warm water reef, has evolved into an almost $1 -million project for the construction of a 3,500-sq.-ft., student-run aquarium facility on Cabrillo High School's campus in Lompoc, CA. Construction began in August 1999 and

Community Contributions

Planning for the new facility began back in 1996, says Dave Long, a teacher at the 1,300-student Cabrillo High School and the aquarium's faculty advisor. Up to this point, the award-winning Cabrillo Aquarium, which has existed since 1986, has been housed in one classroom in the high school building. The new facility, which will be three times the size of the current aquarium space, will include a 35-seat circular multimedia amphitheater, live displays including warm and cold water reefs and a shark habitat, static displays, a computer lab, and a hands-on Touch Tank. Long says the new facility will be the only one of its kind in the country.

The aquarium is visited by students from throughout the district and the general public, drawing thousands of visitors annually. Other than voluntary donations, there is no charge for admission, and Long says they hope to maintain the facility's free-to-all status.

Funding for the aquarium expansion is being raised through grants, and monetary and in-kind donations, not school district funds. Long and his students have been busily lobbying for dollars, from the local community to the state legislature, to agencies in Washington, DC. The projected budget is almost $790,000.

In order to use donations, the Lompoc Unified School District took the role of head contractor, hiring the Frank Schipper Construction Co. (Santa Barbara, CA) as its construction manager. Company president Frank Schipper says the school district did not want to go out to public bid because it then could not use in-kind donations. Schipper is managing approximately 20 primary contractors for the various phases of the construction.

Phillips Metsch Sweeney Moore Architects (Santa Barbara, CA) was chosen to design the building. Roger Phillips, company president, says the firm previously had done several projects for the school district. The architectural firm also donated some of its services to do a feasibility study for use of the school's courtyard for the aquarium facility.

According to Phillips, the courtyard was chosen because of its position at the front of the school, near a large parking lot and the bus loading zone. He says the design of the building will add to the rather plain architecture of the school, as well as making the aquarium easily identifiable. Also, that access to the building will not disrupt the rest of the school.

Building Challenges and Solutions

Designing the building required consideration of several factors. Earthquake-prone California has some of the strictest building codes in the country, Phillips explains. The high school building itself, which was built in the 1960s, is not up to current codes. The aquarium building, which is being constructed within the confines of the U-shaped courtyard, had to be designed to look like a part of the high school building, but could not place any additional stress on the existing school structure.

Phillips says the new structure is designed so that no part of it braces on the old building. Instead, the building has freestanding supports and stands taller than the school itself. The roof line extends over the school's roof and uses clerestory windows that are suspended from the roof itself, affording the facility lots of natural light and high ceilings. The aquarium space is designed for flexibility so that tanks and displays can be rearranged as needed.

To incorporate the in-kind donations, Schipper says the bid specifications had to be reworked, creating 21 individual bid packages, covering each segment of the construction. Bid pack ages for painting, flooring, carpeting, ceramic tile, and landscaping and irrigation were eliminated completely because materials and labor were donated. No bid package was created for epoxy flooring, which was left as a donated item for a later date. Some of the in-kind donations did not materialize and the bid packages had to be revised.

The confined space of the courtyard site itself presented additional construction challenges. Schipper says construction equipment has little room to maneuver on the site, having to avoid damaging the walls of the existing building. "It's a very tricky building," he says. The roof of the aquarium had to be assembled on the ground, then lifted onto the structure by a crane.

Sponsors Chip In

Seed money was awarded to the aquarium from the Coastal Resource Enhancement Fund, which subsequently pledged a total of approximately $190,000 for capital improvements and expansion of the educational program. Long says that state legislators also embraced th aquarium expansion and recommended a grant of $395,900 for the project, which was approved and signed by the governor of California.

They also received numerous local donations from groups, corporations and individuals to put toward the cost of expansion. The aquarium is looking at an ongoing program for corporate sponsorship of individual displays, and the marketing of related souvenirs to help raise the approximately $4,000 in annual maintenance costs.

Reaching the Community

Even before the new facility is ready for use, the existing Cabrillo Aquarium's projects have gained public attention, not only within its own community, but as far up as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Justice Department, having a major impact on the public's view of the ocean and its environs.

Students raised trout from eggs, watching their growth patterns for six weeks, before being allowed to release most of the fingerlings into Lake Cachuma. Originally, the California Department of Fish and Game designated only 35 fingerlings to be released, but later permitted release of more.

Cabrillo High School also received permission from the U. S. Air Force to study the coastline at Vandenberg Air Force Base. One of the areas to be studied is the impact of humans on tidal pools along the coastline at the base.

In addition, the aquarium is reaching out...and down. The aquarium conducts outreach programs, many targeting younger children, to teach them the importance of the oceans and environment.

Long, whose interest in the sea has fueled the program since its inception, says the aquarium provides cross-curriculum, project-based learning and influenced the creation of the course, "Tourism: School to Career." Students run every aspect of the aquarium, from taking care of the tanks and maintaining the aquarium's Web page (http://www.cabrillo-aquarium.org), to conducting tours.

"We're giving our students the opportunity to present their skills to the public," Long says. "Why not use the sea and the environment as the fulcrum point for learning? Our motto is, "We saved the whales -- let's save the rest.'"

Fortunately, the public is behind the students, and the new aquarium will give them better resources to accomplish that dream.

Robbin M. Rittner-Heir is a freelance writer based in Dayton, OH, who writes frequently about educational issues.