Schools

Pleasant Grove High Campus Lacks State Earthquake Safety Certification

The school is one of thousands statewide with incomplete safety inspection records, according to a 19-month investigation of seismic safety in the state's schools conducted by journalists at California Watch.

Buildings on at least three school sites in the Elk Grove Unified School District were never certified as meeting state standards for earthquake safety, according to the California Division of the State Architect.

Elk Grove Patch examined data from DSA, the state office charged with oversight of school construction, as part of a collaboration with the investigative journalism group California Watch. A 19-month California Watch investigation released Thursday uncovered holes in the state's enforcement of seismic safety regulations for public schools. 

California began regulating school architecture for seismic safety in 1933 with the Field Act, but data taken from DSA shows 20,000 school projects statewide never got final safety certifications, according to California Watch. In the crunch to get schools built within the last few decades, state architects have been lax on enforcement, California Watch reported. 

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In Elk Grove, the Pleasant Grove High School campus, a $52 million project completed in 2005, has never been certified as complying with seismic safety standards. A state database says the district failed to submit inspection records proving the buildings’ safety.

While the missing documents don’t necessarily mean the buildings are unsafe, they do indicate that state regulators have not confirmed that they are. Nevertheless, the state closed the case without obtaining required documents in 2006. The district paid a fee to reopen the case in 2008, and is actively trying to get the project certified, said Associate Superintendent for Facilities and Planning Rob Pierce.

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Pierce said the outstanding issues on project were minor and involved a walk-in freezer on the campus, and that administrators had warned teachers and students not to enter the freezer.

“We don’t deem it a safety problem, just an issue that has to be clarified and signed off on,” Pierce said.

Two other Elk Grove projects that lack certification involve portable buildings owned and operated by daycare provider Child Development Incorporated but located on district campuses. A spokesperson for the company wouldn’t comment on the Elk Grove sites, but said that such projects often don’t receive state certification because architects or state regulators lose the relevant documents. The portable buildings themselves are prefabricated and already deemed safe by the state, he said.

The three school construction projects may not be the only ones in Elk Grove that never received state certification. The California Watch investigation found widespread problems with recordkeeping in the DSA office.

In Elk Grove, there are at least half a dozen additional school construction projects built over the last several decades—some owned by the district, others by the county office of education—which neither state regulators nor the district could immediately verify as receiving Field Act certification when asked by Elk Grove Patch this week. In other cases, district and state records conflicted on whether the project was certified.

Pierce said he was not aware that the Pleasant Grove buildings lacked certification under the Act until reporters asked him about them.

While the Field Act focuses on seismic safety, a denial of certification can indicate other problems with a building as well. For example, reporters at California Watch found some school buildings in other parts of the state that had been denied certification because they lacked working fire alarms—but children were allowed to occupy them anyway. It’s unclear if that type of problem applies to any school buildings in Elk Grove.

Problems with seismic safety certification in Elk Grove Unified do not appear to be any more severe than those California Watch found in other large school districts, and may be less severe. A California Watch analysis found that roughly six out of every 10 public schools in the state has at least one uncertified building project.

Elk Grove Patch will continue to follow this story and obtain more detailed information about school building safety in Elk Grove. You can view California Watch’s interactive map of seismic safety issues in California schools here.

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

 


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