A three-story classroom building on the Longfellow Middle School campus is covered by scaffolding. Construction crews discovered severe dry rot in 2024 during renovation work. Credit: Ximena Natera, Berkeleyside/CatchLight
The reconstruction of Longfellow Middle School will be further delayed to summer 2028, with maximum costs ballooning to about $80 million after engineers discovered “unforeseen” structural failures at the campus, school officials say.
The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) board on Wednesday approved an updated contract with Alten Construction for the Longfellow Middle School Modernization Project, now with a completion date of June 22, 2028, about two years later than originally planned. The new cost is estimated at $72.9 million, plus a 10% contingency fund.
Students and staff were relocated to the district’s adult school campus at 1701 San Pablo Ave. after Longfellow’s main building was red‑tagged in June 2024 due to extensive dry rot, water damage and seismic deficiencies that were discovered during remodeling.
BUSD Assistant Superintendent of Facilities John Calise said the district initially believed the damage was limited to one side of Longfellow’s main building, but further inspection revealed the entire structure and others were also compromised.
“We didn’t have a choice but to delay the project,” Calise said in an interview. “It took quite a lot of time to really understand the extent of the problem.”
BUSD said in 2024 that the school community’s relocation was expected to last through the current school year.
Before the discovery of the dry rot, the renovations were initially projected to cost about $22 million with a 10% contingency. By the end of 2024, that price tag had risen to about $68 million. The project required “significant design revisions and expanded construction work” that contributed to the delay, according to April board documents.
Inspection of Longfellow’s other buildings, including the library, administrative office, and gym, found more structural deficiencies resulting from inadequate waterproofing and long‑term water damage.
Calise said the renovation of each affected building became its own project under the Division of the State Architect, which oversees construction for K-12 schools in California. This required new engineering assessments, building redesigns and separate submissions and approvals, Calise said. All plans were then combined into one bid because different contractors legally cannot work on one site, he said.
As a result of the delay, BUSD also extended its contract with Vital Inspection Service to summer 2028, including the addition of a second inspector to meet state requirements for “construction projects of this size,” district officials said. The new contract is over $2.3 million, up from $497,640, according to board documents.
BUSD leaders said all costs remain within the project’s budget from the facilities bond Measure G, which was previously approved by the school board. Longfellow’s total allocation from that fund is about $90 million.
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