Several Earthquake Retrofit Projects at Novato Schools Remain Unfinished, Study Shows

Fourteen of Marin County’s 38 most urgent seismic upgrade projects at public schools have been targeted in Novato since the state made a serious push for school retrofitting more than a decade ago, but no Novato Unified School District sites were deemed dangerously behind the times on earthquake safety codes, according to an extensive study released Thursday.

A 19-month California Watch investigation released Thursday uncovered holes in the state's enforcement of seismic safety regulations for public schools. Despite potential problems for a number of school districts throughout the state in meeting requirements, the Novato district’s executive director of facilities said his district is compliant to all codes when measured against codes in place when each building was constructed.

That doesn’t mean the buildings are all up to date on the latest seismic standards.

“All our buildings are in total compliance,” said John Silvestrini, Novato Unified’s chief of facilities since 2005. “There is no mandate to bring every building up to current codes. There is no requirement to do that because you can’t do that every time the code changes, which happens every three or four years.”

There were 14 earthquake safety projects in Novato schools that have gone at least a decade without completion, and eight of those were at , the statistics show. However, no local projects were considered to be dangerously close to a fault, landslide zone or liquefaction zone.

Silvestrini said he couldn’t say that all school district buildings are earthquake safe because “I’m not a structural engineer.”

Novato voters passed a $107 million bond measure to upgrade facilities in 2001, and many schools have undergone multimillion-dollar modernizations since then. Some of the upgrades, though — such as alterations to fire alarm systems and installations of portable classrooms — had nothing to do with seismic stability.

California began regulating school architecture for seismic safety in 1933 with the passage of the Field Act, but data taken from the Division of the State Architect’s office shows 20,000 school projects statewide never got final safety certifications. In the crunch to get schools built within the past few decades, state architects have been lax on enforcement, California Watch reported. 

A separate inventory completed nine years ago found 7,500 school buildings with possible seismic risks in the state. Yet, California Watch reports that only two of those schools have been able to access a $200 million fund for upgrades. 

“There is $200 million sitting there, but only the schools in the worst cases were eligible for that money,” Silvestrini said. “And that is only to cover 50 percent of the costs of a project; the district has to come up with the other 50 percent. So that’s why only a few school districts have completed anything. …

“Without funding, we can’t do anything. The voters haven’t been asked, nor were they aware, for the money required to do seismic retrofits. The voters of Novato didn’t even know about this (AB 300) list in 2001 when the bond was passed.”

Assembly Bill 300 was passed in 1999 requiring the state to compile a seismic safety inventory of California’s K-12 school buildings. If the state deems schools might possibly be unsafe in the event of an earthquake, it will send an AB 300 letter to the school district. About 4,500 of those letters were sent to school districts statewide.

Ending up on the AB 300 list of potentially seismically risky schools can indicate dangerous safety issues, but it also can signify a simple lapse in certification paperwork even if safety upgrades have been made.

The most serious warning from the Division of the State Architect is a so-called Letter 4, presumably due to the most dangerous cases of noncompliance. According to California Watch, the architect’s office has a list of nearly 20,000 school projects that are uncertified – and about 1,000 of the schools on that list were at some point given Letter 4 warnings.

In Marin, just one project – at in San Rafael – has received a Letter 4, according to California Watch.

For districts such as Novato with buildings on the AB 300 list, the Division of State Architect recommends a districtwide survey of all campuses be conducted by a California-licensed structural engineer to identify buildings that may pose a seismic risk and assist the district in prioritizing actions to be taken.  

Silvestrini reiterated that AB 300 did not come with requirements that school districts spend money on earthquake safety alterations. “It merely asked the districts to assess the costs,” he said. “ … We’ve done all these modernization projects, but there were no structural upgrades because it is not mandated and because we have no money.”

Regardless of what buildings are safer than others, Californians are at risk for an earthquake and residents should .

This story was produced using data provided to Patch by California Watch, the state's largest investigative reporting team and part of the Center for Investigative Reporting. Read more about Patch's collaboration with California Watch.