Cellular phone companies looking to boost coverage in their busiest markets are finding enthusiastic partners in cash-strapped school districts..
Wireless carriers are paying tens of thousands of dollars in rent each year to dozens of Southern California school districts for places to put relay equipment and towers that help plug gaps in phone service.
ABC Unified, which serves Artesia and other cities in southeast Los Angeles County, gets $1,000 a month for phone equipment hidden in a pine tree at school district headquarters in Cerritos. At Dana Hills High in Dana Point, three phone carriers share space on a football stadium light tower.
"It's a win-win situation," said Len Forkas, whose Reston, Va., company designs, builds, owns and rents thousands of such poles, including many leased on school property.
The agreements are vital to the booming wireless industry, which has seen a nearly 150% increase in subscribers, to about 132 million, in the last five years.
"Phone companies used to be trying to [sell] the coverage," said Tom Flynn, director of operations for a Florida company that designs and builds cellular towers and antennas. "But now they've got so many subscribers, they need the capacity to handle it all."
Certainly there are places to put transmitting equipment besides schools. Margaret Brown, spokeswoman for wireless giant Nextel Communications, said only a small percentage of that company's 15,500 cellular antennas nationwide are on campuses.
Cellular phone companies pay cities and other governmental entities to place transmitting equipment on public buildings in California and elsewhere. Churches also are reaping rewards as service providers try to get antennas placed in bell towers, steeples and sanctuary crosses.
Like churches, schools offer a way into residential areas, where people often are opposed to having unattractive relay equipment dominating the landscape. "We look for the best place to serve our customers," Brown said. "The best place to locate our equipment is where we have the most customers."
Nextel's sites range from a tower on a mountaintop to an antenna connection hidden in a tree at a busy intersection.
School Districts Accept Barter as Well as Cash
Local schools aren't getting rich as landlords, but the districts have been able to augment their cash-strapped budgets by signing contracts with an array of carriers, or turnkeys who handle their site acquisitions and permitting. One high school traded space on its stadium light pole for construction of a snack bar.
When AT&T Wireless installed two antennas inside the football stadium at Gahr High in Cerritos in 2000, ABC Unified received $15,000, plus the first $1,300 monthly installment on a lease that expires in 2015, said Gary Smuts, the district's deputy superintendent.
Most of the money is placed in a fund created to offset costs when the schools host community events, Smuts said. "It's a break-even proposition," he added.
Irvine Unified's contracts with 13 carriers at three schools have generated $552,000 for the district since 1989, with an additional $100,000 on the way by 2005. Moreno Valley Unified receives $14,500 annually for two out-of-the-way sites at Moreno Valley High School. Capistrano Unified gets about $1,000 a month from each of the five carriers that lease space at Dana Hills and Capistrano Valley high schools.
The first agreements were made nearly 20 years ago, and the down payments weren't always cash.
When the first of Capistrano Valley High's two cellular towers went up next to the school's football field, the phone carrier built restrooms for the stadium.
Located in separate square enclosures, the towers share space with a small building that houses a backup generator. One enclosure is at the edge of the school's track, about 50 feet from the newly sodded southern end zone of the football field.
At one end of the enclosure a sign hanging at eye level reads, "Radio frequency fields beyond this point may exceed the FCC general public exposure limit."
The low-level radiation emitted from the antennas is a common concern of community groups that occasionally oppose the partnerships between schools and the phone companies.
But the danger of such transmitting stations is generally regarded as negligible. Experts such as John E. Moulder, professor of radiation oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, say radio-frequency radiation emitted by mobile phone antennas is too low to be considered a health hazard, as long as people stay a few feet from them.
In a published medical article, Moulder wrote that people should stay clear of the transmitting antennas, but that there was no danger from the towers or masts that hold them.
Bob Sendzik, who manages facilities and planning for Capistrano Unified, said he hasn't received complaints about the cell towers at Capistrano Valley or Dana Hills high schools, where the first antenna was raised in exchange for the construction of the football stadium's snack bar.
