California has funded less than half of an $800 million program intended to repair shoddy school facilities. The Emergency Repair Program, which was born out of a landmark class-action lawsuit that sought to entitle every student to a clean, safe and functional school, should be in its final year of funding. The state's contributions to date — $338 million — have remained unchanged for the past five years.
This map shows how much money each county received in 2011 through Secure Rural Schools, as well as total payments since 2001.
As of late 2010, the state had issued nearly 1,100 notices to school districts with construction projects that had known safety concerns. We've done our best to identify the projects below, but the state's data is messy.
Despite years of efforts to equalize spending in California schools, some districts receive thousands of dollars more per student than others. But the bigger expenditure didn't assure higher test scores. Browse the spending per student and test score data by county for all school districts in the state.
Many schools in California are near fault lines or other earthquake hazards. That doesn't mean they'll collapse in a quake, but many school construction projects have failed to follow basic safety standards. California Watch uncovered about 20,000 projects that lack Field Act certification. Is your school one of them?
The project started out as a simple Loma Prieta quake anniversary story by a solitary reporter. Nineteen months later, nearly four dozen reporters, producers, and freelancers had joined the project. Learn more about how we reported this series.
