Officials will review proposals today that would make it easier for schools with potentially dangerous buildings to qualify for seismic repair funds.

Only 20 buildings are currently eligible, but the new proposals could give anywhere from 83 to 189 additional buildings access to a $200 million fund that has sat largely untouched for five years.

As California Watch previously reported, the state’s rigid rules had made it almost impossible for schools to access the money – only schools that are likely to endure ground movement more intense than the Northridge and Loma Prieta earthquakes qualified. The State Allocation Board will consider changing those rules today.

To date, only two schools have received funding. San Ramon Valley High School received $3.6 million to build a new gym, and Piedmont High School was awarded $1 million for two renovation projects.

Over 7,000 potentially vulnerable schools still cannot access the fund. This includes over 2,000 buildings in Los Angeles County and over 750 in Orange County, neither of which has received any state funding for seismic retrofits.  

In late March, after California Watch began questioning how the funding criteria were developed, the State Allocation Board, which controls funding for school districts, created a subcommittee to study ways to create “greater accessibility” to the Seismic Mitigation Program.

The subcommittee ordered state construction officials at the Office of Public School Construction, the Division of the State Architect, and the California Seismic Safety Commission to research alternative criteria and present their findings at today's hearing.

To qualify for funding under current rules, a school has to show it faces the risk of an unusually high ground-shaking force – or g-force – during an earthquake and must have a certain type of building construction. While the new proposals still stress ground-shaking, they propose lowering the required g-force, which would make an estimated 83 to 99 additional buildings eligible.

But staff who have researched the proposed changes say the additional buildings might exceed the pool of money for repairs, according to the meeting agenda [PDF].  When the original inventory of vulnerable school buildings was released in 2002, the state estimated it would cost $4.7 billion to address them all.

Another proposal would expand the building types that qualify for a portion of the $200 million in funding, making an additional 189 buildings eligible. 

In a previous subcommittee meeting, school districts noted that the requirement to provide matching funds equal to the state's contribution often prevented them from participating. That requirement will not be waived in today's meeting, according to the agenda, since the State Allocation Board does not have the authority to change it.

Districts also said that they could not retrofit buildings unless they could use some of the money for interim buildings for students while construction is under way. The committee will hear about new guidelines that could allow school districts to use the money to cover these costs.

Full list of schools and buildings