LEUSD Defends Its Record On Seismic Safety

“Our children are not in peril, and I think it’s a misleading direction,” said Mark Dennis, coordinator of community and media relations for the Lake Elsinore Unified School District.

Dennis’s remarks came Friday after Lake Elsinore-Wildomar Patch  that found 49 construction projects within LEUSD schools never received final safety certification from the state as required under the Field Act. The report also found five schools in the district join a long list of California schools known as "AB 300 schools" that are need of seismic review.

The Field Act requires that strict design and construction standards be applied to the state's schools, and that final safety certification be obtained. The law was adopted as a safeguard against the tragedy of 1933, when the 6.4-magnitude Long Beach Earthquake flattened schools across that city.

Greg Bowers, LEUSD assistant superintendent -- facilities and operations support services, acknowledged the district does have schools that are not in compliance under the exact terms of the law, but said the problem is not shoddy construction or shady practices.

“It’s a paperwork issue,” Bowers said, explaining that none of the issues are safety-related.

Eric Lamoureux, acting deputy director of the state Department of General Services, said that the state has closed out construction projects without final certification.

“During the last 20 years, there has been a building boom and there was a backlog,” Lamoureux admitted of the state’s practices.

Bowers said the district has yet to dig through each of its uncertified projects, but said the issue is being taken seriously.

“We don’t take this lightly. We’re going to do our due diligence,” he said.

Bowers said the process is tedious and pointed to an example at Temescal Canyon High School in which a project was closed out without final safety certification. He said the missing documentation pertains to drapes in one of the school’s large auditoriums.

“We have to show that the drapes have the required fire rating, but the manufacturer is no longer around,” he said. “We have to track down that one last piece of paper for certification.”

As for the five LEUSD schools on the AB 300 list, the issue might be paperwork. And that is exactly what Bowers contends.

As reported last week, in 1999 the California legislature approved AB 300, which required the state’s Department of General Services to conduct a “collapse risk” inventory of K-12 school buildings built before July 1, 1978. As a result, the state identified 7,537 at-risk California school buildings,

The list was compiled using records and files – not indepth inspections. Schools that did not have updated records, showing that buildings had been modernized and safety certifications obtained, were placed on the AB 300 list.

Lamoureux said last week that the DSG doesn’t have “quantifiable evidence” that AB 300 at-risk schools are structurally unsound, but no one knows for certain because paperwork is missing.

Bowers argues that schools are overbuilt today and that there is no question about the structural integrity of LEUSD campuses and facilities.

“(School) buildings are the safest out there,” Bowers said, explaining that under state law, public schools and hospitals are required to adhere to the strictest standards, which includes state oversight and rigid inspections.

Lamoureux also provided similar comment.

Bowers said that within the last 15 years, the LEUSD has used nearly $20 million in grant money to modernize its structures.

But even if it's just a matter of missing paperwork, what does that really mean?

“We’re sorting out the list,” Bowers said of the uncertified projects and schools on the AB 300 list. “This is nothing new to us.”

The process is arduous, however. Neither Bowers nor Dennis could provide estimates on how much it will cost the LEUSD to bring all schools up to compliance.

“It will be very expensive,” Bowers said.