Carmichael Schools Appear Sound

Are our schools built to the highest standards of safety?

Can we prove it?

That’s the question Patch and California Watch aim to answer as California building officials are this week contacting school districts throughout the state to ensure they have the proper safety certifications on file.

A 19-month California Watch investigation, which was released Thursday, uncovered holes in the state's enforcement of seismic safety regulations for public schools.

Luckily, no school projects in Carmichael are on the list as being the most potentially dangerous.

California began regulating school architecture for seismic safety in 1933 with 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 last few decades, state architects have been lax on enforcement, California Watch reported.

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

While no Carmichael schools have the “Letter 4” designation from the sate architect’s office — the term used to describe those projects that have been closed out but that are missing vital pieces of information about seismic safety — there are several projects that lacked final certification as of last September.

Most of those projects have a lesser designation — a Letter 3 — that Eric Lamoureux of the state architects office says is not deemed a critical safety concern.

Lamoureux said that district officials have deemed most of these projects safe, but a lack of proper accounting may hinder additional work on those projects, if needed.

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.